Related papers: LunarNav: Crater-based Localization for Long-range…
Terrain relative navigation can improve the precision of a spacecraft's position estimate by detecting global features that act as supplementary measurements to correct for drift in the inertial navigation system. This paper presents a…
Robotics plays a pivotal role in planetary science and exploration, where autonomous and reliable systems are crucial due to the risks and challenges inherent to space environments. The establishment of permanent lunar bases demands robotic…
One of the fundamental limiting factors in planetary exploration is the autonomous capabilities of planetary exploration rovers. This study proposes a novel methodology for trustworthy autonomous multi-robot teams which incorporates data…
In future operations on the lunar surface, automated vehicles will be required to transport cargo between known locations. Such vehicles must be able to navigate precisely in safe regions to avoid natural hazards, human-constructed…
The NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has returned petabytes of lunar high spatial resolution surface imagery over the past decade, impractical for humans to fully review manually. Here we develop an automated method using a deep…
Plans for establishing a long-term human presence on the Moon will require substantial increases in robot autonomy and multi-robot coordination to support establishing a lunar outpost. To achieve these objectives, algorithm design choices…
Exploration of terrestrial planets such as Mars are conducted using orbiters, landers and rovers. Cameras and instruments onboard orbiters have enabled global mapping of Mars at low spatial resolution. Landers and rovers such as the Mars…
In addition to conventional ground rovers, the Mars 2020 mission will send a helicopter to Mars. The copter's high-resolution data helps the rover to identify small hazards such as steps and pointy rocks, as well as providing rich textual…
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…
We present MLNav, a learning-enhanced path planning framework for safety-critical and resource-limited systems operating in complex environments, such as rovers navigating on Mars. MLNav makes judicious use of machine learning to enhance…
Crater counting on the Moon and other bodies is crucial to constrain the dynamical history of the Solar System. This has traditionally been done by visual inspection of images, thus limiting the scope, efficiency, and/or accuracy of…
NASA's forthcoming Lunar Gateway space station, which will be uncrewed most of the time, will need to operate with an unprecedented level of autonomy. One key challenge is enabling the Canadarm3, the Gateway's external robotic system, to…
The European Moon Rover System (EMRS) Pre-Phase A activity is part of the European Exploration Envelope Programme (E3P) that seeks to develop a versatile surface mobility solution for future lunar missions. These missions include: the Polar…
Optical navigation is a critical component for lunar orbiter and lander missions. Image-based crater identification has emerged as a promising technology for optical navigation due to the abundance of craters on the lunar surface and the…
Landing robotic spacecrafts and humans on Mars has become one of the inevitable technological necessities for humans. Effectuating perfect Mars expedition requires landing of enormous cargoes, crewed modules, ascent vehicles, and scientific…
Entrapment detection is a prerequisite for planetary rovers to perform autonomous rescue procedure. In this study, rover entrapment and approximated entrapment criteria are formally defined. Entrapment detection using Naive Bayes…
The Gateway will represent a primary space system useful for the Artemis program, Earth-Moon transportation, and deep space exploration. It is expected to serve as a staging location on the way to the lunar surface. This study focuses on…
Current planetary rovers operate at traverse speeds of approximately 10 cm/s, fundamentally limiting exploration efficiency. This work presents integrated AI systems which significantly improve autonomy through three components: (i) the…
This study presents an autonomous orbit determination system based on crosslink radiometric measurements applied to a future lunar CubeSat mission to clearly highlight its advantages with respect to existing ground-based navigation…
In this paper, a control approach called Artificial Neural Tissue (ANT) is applied to multirobot excavation for lunar base preparation tasks including clearing landing pads and burying of habitat modules. We show for the first time, a team…