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The survey of the nearby space and continuous monitoring of the Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and especially Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) are essential for the future of our planet and should represent a priority for our solar system research…
We present an autonomous exploration system for efficient coverage of unknown environments. First, a rapid environment preprocessing method is introduced to provide environmental information for subsequent exploration planning. Then, the…
We present a gradient-based optimal-control technique for open quantum systems that utilizes quantum trajectories to simulate the quantum dynamics during optimization. Using trajectories allows for optimizing open systems with less…
Robotic search and rescue, exploration, and inspection require trajectory planning across a variety of domains. A popular approach to trajectory planning for these types of missions is ergodic search, which biases a trajectory to spend time…
We describe systematic ranging, an orbit determination technique especially suitable to assess the near-term Earth impact hazard posed by newly discovered asteroids. For these late warning cases, the time interval covered by the…
We present a systematic analysis of automatic differentiation (AD) applications in astrophysics, identifying domains where gradient-based optimization could provide significant computational advantages. Building on our previous work with…
In this study, an interplanetary space flight mission design is established to obtain the minimum \(\Delta V\) required for a rendezvous and sample return mission from an asteroid. Given the initial (observed) conditions of an asteroid, a…
We present a method for image-guided exploration for mobile robotic systems. Our approach extends ergodic exploration methods, a recent exploration approach that prioritizes complete coverage of a space, with the use of a learned image…
Orbital debris is a pressing problem which presents a danger to global space operations and a barrier to continued development of the space economy and space infrastructure. As research continues regarding orbital debris, there is a need…
This paper investigates performance guarantees on coverage-based ergodic exploration methods in environments containing disturbances. Ergodic exploration methods generate trajectories for autonomous robots such that time spent in each area…
Multi-phase trajectories of aerospace vehicle systems involve multiple flight segments whose transitions may be triggered by boolean logic in continuous state variables, control and time. When the boolean logic is represented using only…
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…
The Gaia Data Release 1 (GDR1) is a first, important step on the path of evolution of astrometric accuracy towards a much improved situation. Although asteroids are not present in GDR1, this intermediate release already impacts asteroid…
Trajectory planning is challenging for autonomous cars since they operate in unpredictable environments with limited sensor horizons. To incorporate new information as it is sensed, planning is done in a loop, with the next plan being…
Autonomous Science is a field of study which aims to extend the autonomy of exploration robots from low level functionality, such as on-board perception and obstacle avoidance, to science autonomy, which allows scientists to specify…
Autonomous exploration of cluttered environments requires efficient exploration strategies that guarantee safety against potential collisions with unknown random obstacles. This paper presents a novel approach combining a graph neural…
In 2023, the 12th edition of Global Trajectory Competition was organised around the problem referred to as "Sustainable Asteroid Mining". This paper reports the developments that led to the solution proposed by ESA's Advanced Concepts Team.…
In recent years, the retrieval of entire asteroids has received significant attention, with many approaches leveraging the invariant manifolds of the Circular-Restricted Three-body Problem to capture an asteroid into a periodic orbit about…
This work presents a 3D multi-robot exploration framework for a team of UGVs moving on uneven terrains. The framework was designed by casting the two-level coordination strategy presented in [1] into the context of multi-robot exploration.…
This work studies the problem of object goal navigation which involves navigating to an instance of the given object category in unseen environments. End-to-end learning-based navigation methods struggle at this task as they are ineffective…