Related papers: ShadowNav: Crater-Based Localization for Nighttime…
Onboard localization capabilities for planetary rovers to date have used relative navigation, by integrating combinations of wheel odometry, visual odometry, and inertial measurements during each drive to track position relative to the…
The ability to determine the pose of a rover in an inertial frame autonomously is a crucial capability necessary for the next generation of surface rover missions on other planetary bodies. Currently, most on-going rover missions utilize…
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…
Global localization is necessary for autonomous operations on the lunar surface where traditional Earth-based navigation infrastructure, such as GPS, is unavailable. As NASA advances toward sustained lunar presence under the Artemis…
In order to make a pinpoint landing on the Moon, the spacecraft's navigation system must be accurate. To achieve the desired accuracy, navigational drift caused by the inertial sensors must be corrected. One way to correct this drift is to…
Future lunar missions will require autonomous rovers capable of traversing tens of kilometers across challenging terrain while maintaining accurate localization and producing globally consistent maps. However, the absence of global…
Planetary exploration using aerial assets has the potential for unprecedented scientific discoveries on Mars. While NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity proved flight in Martian atmosphere is possible, future Mars rotorcraft will require…
This article describes the characterization activities of the landing sites currently envisaged for the Lunar Lander mission of the European Space Agency. These sites have been identified in the South Pole Region (-85{\deg} to -90{\deg}…
This work addresses the challenge of developing a localization system for an uncrewed ground vehicle (UGV) operating autonomously in unstructured outdoor Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-denied environments. The goal is to enable…
Exploration of the lunar south pole with a solar-powered rover is challenging due to the highly dynamic solar illumination conditions and the presence of permanently shadowed regions (PSRs). In turn, careful planning in space and time is…
Automotive self-localization is an essential task for any automated driving function. This means that the vehicle has to reliably know its position and orientation with an accuracy of a few centimeters and degrees, respectively. This paper…
Accurate and robust state estimation at nighttime is essential for autonomous robotic navigation to achieve nocturnal or round-the-clock tasks. An intuitive question arises: Can low-cost standard cameras be exploited for nocturnal state…
In this work, we propose the use of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) for rover localization on Mars. Precise pose estimation is an important task for mobile robots exploring planetary surfaces, as they operate in GPS-denied environments.…
We present a modular, full-stack autonomy system for lunar surface navigation and mapping developed for the Lunar Autonomy Challenge. Operating in a GNSS-denied, visually challenging environment, our pipeline integrates semantic…
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…
Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) using automotive radar sensors can provide enhanced sensing capabilities for autonomous systems. In SLAM applications, with a greater requirement for the environment map, information on the…
Localization in a battlefield environment is increasingly challenging as GPS connectivity is often denied or unreliable, and physical deployment of anchor nodes across wireless networks for localization can be difficult in hostile…
Vision-aided localization for low-cost mobile robots in diverse environments has attracted widespread attention recently. Although many current systems are applicable in daytime environments, nocturnal visual localization is still an open…
Autonomous driving has long grappled with the need for precise absolute localization, making full autonomy elusive and raising the capital entry barriers for startups. This study delves into the feasibility of local trajectory planning for…
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…