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Elongate limbless robots have the potential to locomote through tightly packed spaces for applications such as search-and-rescue and industrial inspections. The capability to effectively and robustly maneuver elongate limbless robots is…
Air-ground collaborative robots have shown great potential in the field of fire and rescue, which can quickly respond to rescue needs and improve the efficiency of task execution. Mapping and navigation, as the key foundation for air-ground…
The field of autonomous navigation for unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) is in continuous growth and increasing levels of autonomy have been reached in the last few years. However, the task becomes more challenging when the focus is on the…
This paper develops a communication-efficient distributed mapping approach for rapid exploration of a cave by a multi-robot team. Subsurface planetary exploration is an unsolved problem challenged by communication, power, and compute…
Since the beginning of robotic interplanetary exploration nearly six decades ago, successful atmospheric entry has been accomplished at Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Titan. More entry probe missions are planned to Venus, Titan, and…
The following paper reviews recent developments in the field of optimization of space robotics. The extent of focus of this paper is on the perception (robotic sense of analyzing surroundings) in space robots in the exploration of…
Permanently Shadowed Regions (PSRs) near the lunar poles are of interest for future exploration due to their potential to contain water ice and preserve geological records. Their complex, uneven terrain favors the use of legged robots,…
Legged robots have the ability to adapt their walking posture to navigate confined spaces due to their high degrees of freedom. However, this has not been exploited in most common multilegged platforms. This paper presents a deformable…
Celestial bodies such as the Moon and Mars are mainly covered by loose, granular soil, a notoriously challenging terrain to traverse with (wheeled) robotic systems. Here, we present experimental work on traversing steep, granular slopes…
Inspired by human behavior when traveling over unknown terrain, this study proposes the use of probing strategies and integrates them into a traversability analysis framework to address safe navigation on unknown rough terrain. Our…
NASA aims to establish a sustainable human basecamp on the Moon as a stepping stone for future missions to Mars and beyond. The discovery of water ice on the Moon's craters located in permanently shadowed regions, which can provide drinking…
Motion planning for a multi-limbed climbing robot must consider the robot's posture, joint torques, and how it uses contact forces to interact with its environment. This paper focuses on motion planning for a robot that uses nontraditional…
Legged rovers provide enhanced mobility compared to wheeled platforms, enabling navigation on steep and irregular planetary terrains. However, traditional legged locomotion might be energetically inefficient and potentially dangerous to the…
Exploration and mapping of unknown environments is a fundamental task in applications for autonomous robots. In this article, we present a complete framework for deploying MAVs in autonomous exploration missions in unknown subterranean…
The request for fast response and safe operation after natural and man-made disasters in urban environments has spurred the development of robotic systems designed to assist in search and rescue operations within complex rubble sites.…
Climbing robots hold significant promise for applications such as industrial inspection and maintenance, particularly in hazardous or hard-to-reach environments. This paper describes the quadrupedal climbing robot Magnecko, developed with…
This roadmap outlines research pathways to determine whether Mars could be warmed with non-biological methods. It does not presuppose that warming Mars is desirable; its purpose is to identify what would need to be true for Mars to be…
Planet Mars past environmental conditions were similar to the early Earth, but nowadays they are similar to those of a very cold desert, irradiated by intense solar UV light. However, some terrestrial lifeform showed the capability to adapt…
Exploration of unknown, unstructured environments, such as in search and rescue, cave exploration, and planetary missions,presents significant challenges due to their unpredictable nature. This unpredictability can lead to inefficient path…
Conventional navigation pipelines for legged robots remain largely geometry-centric, relying on dense SLAM representations that are fragile under rapid motion and offer limited support for semantic decision making in open-world exploration.…