Related papers: Autonomous Rendezvous with Non-cooperative Target …
Space debris and inactive satellites pose a threat to the safety and integrity of operational spacecraft and motivate the need for space situational awareness techniques. These uncooperative targets create a challenging tracking and…
A metamorphic robotic system (MRS) consists of anonymous modules, each of which autonomously moves in the 2D square grid by sliding and rotation with keeping connectivity among the modules. Existing literature considers distributed…
In this paper are described the image processing algorithms developed by SENER, Ingenieria y Sistemas to cope with the problem of image-based, autonomous rendez-vous (RV) with an orbiting satellite. The methods developed have a direct…
A fundamental maneuver in autonomous space operations is known as rendezvous, where a spacecraft navigates to and approaches another spacecraft. In this case study, we present linear and nonlinear benchmark models of an active chaser…
Space debris is an ever-increasing problem in space travel. There are already many old, no longer functional spacecraft and debris orbiting the earth, which endanger both the safe operation of satellites and space travel. Small…
Autonomous aerial tracking with drones offers vast potential for surveillance, cinematography, and industrial inspection applications. While single-drone tracking systems have been extensively studied, swarm-based target tracking remains…
As the orbital environment around Earth becomes increasingly crowded with debris, active debris removal (ADR) missions face significant challenges in ensuring safe operations while minimizing the risk of in-orbit collisions. This study…
An unmanned surface vehicle (USV) can perform complex missions by continuously observing the state of its surroundings and taking action toward a goal. A SWARM of USVs working together can complete missions faster, and more effectively than…
This paper presents a new algorithm for autonomous multitarget tracking of resident space objects using optical angles-only measurements from a spaceborne observer. To enable autonomous angles-only navigation of spacecraft swarms, an…
Autonomous aerial-surface robot teams offer a scalable solution for maritime monitoring, but deployment remains difficult due to water-induced visual artifacts and bandwidth-limited coordination. This paper presents a decentralized…
The escalating accumulation of orbital debris threatens the sustainability of space operations, necessitating active removal solutions that overcome the limitations of current fuel-dependent methods. To address this, this study introduces a…
Planetary bodies such as asteroids, comets, and planetary moons are high-value science targets as they hold important information about the formation and evolution of our solar system. However, due to their low-gravity, variable sizes and…
With the sustained rise in satellite deployment in Low Earth Orbits, the collision risk from untracked space debris is also increasing. Often small-sized space debris (below 10 cm) are hard to track using the existing state-of-the-art…
This paper presents a coordination algorithm for mobile autonomous robots. Relying upon distributed sensing the robots achieve rendezvous, that is, they move to a common location. Each robot is a point mass moving in a nonconvex environment…
This study develops an AI-based implementation of autonomous On-Orbit Servicing (OOS) mission to assist with spacecraft collision avoidance maneuvers (CAMs). We propose an autonomous `servicer' trained with Reinforcement Learning (RL) to…
We present a fully integrated autonomous multi- robot aerial system for finding and collecting moving and static objects with unknown locations. This task addresses multiple relevant problems in search and rescue (SAR) robotics such as…
Approaching a tumbling target safely is a critical challenge in space debris removal missions utilizing robotic manipulators onboard servicing satellites. In this work, we propose a trajectory planning method based on nonlinear optimization…
In this paper, the trajectory planning problem for autonomous rendezvous and docking between a controlled spacecraft and a tumbling target is addressed. The use of a variable planning horizon is proposed in order to construct an appropriate…
This paper tackles the problem of positioning a swarm of UAVs inside a completely unknown terrain, having as objective to maximize the overall situational awareness. The situational awareness is expressed by the number and quality of unique…
A decentralized swarm approach for the fast cooperative flight of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in feature-poor environments without any external localization and communication is introduced in this paper. A novel model of a UAV…