Related papers: Lunar Rover Localization Using Craters as Landmark…
Simulation of vehicle motion in planetary environments is challenging. This is due to the modeling of complex terrain, optical conditions, and terrain-aware vehicle dynamics. One of the critical issues of typical simulators is that they…
Currently, visual odometry and LIDAR odometry are performing well in pose estimation in some typical environments, but they still cannot recover the localization state at high speed or reduce accumulated drifts. In order to solve these…
Long-term scene changes present challenges to localization systems using a pre-built map. This paper presents a LiDAR-based system that can provide robust localization against those challenges. Our method starts with activation of a mapping…
Localization of an autonomous mobile robot during planetary exploration is challenging due to the unknown terrain, the difficult lighting conditions and the lack of any global reference such as satellite navigation systems. We present a…
The European Space Agency (ESA), driven by its ambitions on planned lunar missions with the Argonaut lander, has a profound interest in reliable crater detection, since craters pose a risk to safe lunar landings. This task is usually…
Planetary rover exploration is attracting renewed interest with several upcoming space missions to the Moon and Mars. However, a substantial amount of data from prior missions remain underutilized for path planning and autonomous navigation…
With NASA's planned return to the moon and possibly with lunar outposts being formed, repeated landings at the same site will be necessary. Understanding rocket plume interaction with lunar and Martian surfaces is of paramount importance in…
The success of a multi-kilometre drive by a solar-powered rover at the lunar south pole depends upon careful planning in space and time due to highly dynamic solar illumination conditions. An additional challenge is that the rover may be…
Space exploration has witnessed revolutionary changes upon landing of the Perseverance Rover on the Martian surface and demonstrating the first flight beyond Earth by the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity. During their mission on Mars,…
Future planetary missions will rely on rovers that can autonomously explore and navigate in unstructured environments. An essential element is the ability to recognize places that were already visited or mapped. In this work, we leverage…
The increasingly complex and diverse planetary exploration environment requires more adaptable and flexible rover navigation strategy. In this study, we propose a VLM-empowered multi-mode system to achieve efficient while safe autonomous…
Relative localization between autonomous robots without infrastructure is crucial to achieve their navigation, path planning, and formation in many applications, such as emergency response, where acquiring a prior knowledge of the…
A future lunar habitat, as part of the Artemis program, will require a significant amount of logistics infrastructure. Cargo that is transported to the Moon will need to be moved from a landing site to other key locations that may be up to…
The visuomotor system of any animal is critical for its survival, and the development of a complex one within humans is large factor in our success as a species on Earth. This system is an essential part of our ability to adapt to our…
The regain of interest in Moon exploration has substantially grown in the last years. For this reason, the space agencies consider the development of a precise navigation and positioning service similar to the Earth GNSS. Aiming at some…
The successes of previous and current Mars rovers have encouraged space agencies worldwide to pursue additional planetary exploration missions with more ambitious navigation goals. For example, NASA's planned Mars Sample Return mission will…
The discovery of ice deposits in the permanently shadowed craters of the lunar North and South Pole Moon presents an important opportunity for In-Situ Resource Utilization. These ice deposits maybe the source for sustaining a lunar base or…
Crater ellipticity determination is a complex and time consuming task that so far has evaded successful automation. We train a state of the art computer vision algorithm to identify craters in Lunar digital elevation maps and retrieve their…
Global navigation satellite systems use appropriate satellite constellations to get the coordinates of an user -close to Earth- in an almost inertial reference system. We have simulated both GPS and GALILEO constellations. Uncertainties in…
Traversability assessment of deformable terrain is vital for safe rover navigation on planetary surfaces. Machine learning (ML) is a powerful tool for traversability prediction but faces predictive uncertainty. This uncertainty leads to…