Related papers: Hazard Detection And Avoidance For The Nova-C Land…
Because of the communication delay between earth and moon, the GNC technology of lunar probe is becoming more important than ever. Current navigation technology is not able to provide precise motion estimation for probe landing control…
The number of space objects will grow several times in a few years due to the planned launches of constellations of thousands microsatellites. It leads to a significant increase in the threat of satellite collisions. Spacecraft must…
Obstacle avoidance is a key feature for safe Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) navigation. While solutions have been proposed for static obstacle avoidance, systems enabling avoidance of dynamic objects, such as drones, are hard to implement…
This paper proposes a Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) architecture for planetary rovers targeting the conditions of upcoming Mars exploration missions such as Mars 2020 and the Sample Fetching Rover (SFR). The navigation…
Exploration of asteroids and comets can give insight into the origins of the solar system and can be instrumental in planetary defence and in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). Asteroids, due to their low gravity are a challenging target for…
This article proposes a Novel Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) for navigation and obstacle avoidance of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The proposed NMPC formulation allows for a fully parametric obstacle trajectory, while in…
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…
While Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly deployed in several missions, their inability of reliable and consistent autonomous landing poses a major setback for deploying such systems truly autonomously. In this paper we present…
The visual detection and tracking of surface terrain is required for spacecraft to safely land on or navigate within close proximity to celestial objects. Current approaches rely on template matching with pre-gathered patch-based features,…
In recent years, the growth of Machine Learning (ML) algorithms has raised the number of studies including their applicability in a variety of different scenarios. Among all, one of the hardest ones is the aerospace, due to its peculiar…
Autonomous navigation by drones using onboard sensors, combined with deep learning and computer vision algorithms, is impacting a number of domains. We examine the use of drones to autonomously follow and assist Visually Impaired People…
Attention mechanisms are becoming increasingly popular, being used in neural network models in multiple domains such as natural language processing (NLP) and vision applications, especially at the edge. However, attention layers are…
The Artemis program requires robotic and crewed lunar rovers for resource prospecting and exploitation, construction and maintenance of facilities, and human exploration. These rovers must support navigation for 10s of kilometers (km) from…
There is no doubt that the Moon has become the center of interest for commercial and international actors. Over the past decade, the number of planned long-term missions has increased dramatically. This makes the establishment of cislunar…
Onboard terrain sensing and mapping for safe planetary landings often suffer from missed hazardous features, e.g., small rocks, due to the large observational range and the limited resolution of the obtained terrain data. To this end, this…
Safely landing on the lunar surface is a challenging task, especially in the heavily-shadowed South Pole region where traditional vision-based hazard detection methods are not reliable. The potential existence of valuable resources at the…
In this article we propose a reactive constrained navigation scheme, with embedded obstacles avoidance for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), for enabling navigation in obstacle-dense environments. The proposed navigation architecture is…
This paper presents the preliminary design of the descent and landing trajectory of the ESA Argonaut lunar lander. The mission scenario and driving system constraints are presented and accounted for in the design of a fuel-optimal…
The miniaturisation of sensors and processors, the advancements in connected edge intelligence, and the exponential interest in Artificial Intelligence are boosting the affirmation of autonomous nano-size drones in the Internet of Robotic…
Next generation Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) must reliably avoid moving obstacles. Existing dynamic collision avoidance methods are effective where obstacle trajectories are linear or known, but such restrictions are not accurate to many…