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Lunar exploration has become a key focus, driving scientific and technological advances. Ongoing missions are deploying rovers to the surface of the Moon, targeting the far side and south pole. However, these terrains pose challenges,…
Today, robotics is an auspicious and fast-growing branch of technology that involves the manufacturing, design, and maintenance of robot machines that can operate in an autonomous fashion and can be used in a wide variety of applications…
Safe and high-speed navigation is a key enabling capability for real world deployment of robotic systems. A significant limitation of existing approaches is the computational bottleneck associated with explicit mapping and the limited field…
Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have become indispensable for deep-sea exploration, spanning critical scientific research and commercial applications. The rapid attenuation of electromagnetic waves renders satellite radio signals…
Research on coastal regions traditionally involves methods like manual sampling, monitoring buoys, and remote sensing, but these methods face challenges in spatially and temporally diverse regions of interest. Autonomous surface vehicles…
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 Curiosity rover is one of the most complex systems successfully deployed in a planetary exploration mission to date. It was sent by NASA to explore the surface of Mars and to identify potential signs of life. Even though it has limited…
Cameras are rapidly becoming the choice for on-board sensors towards space rendezvous due to their small form factor and inexpensive power, mass, and volume costs. When it comes to docking, however, they typically serve a secondary role,…
We present an approach to enhance wheeled planetary rover dead-reckoning localization performance by leveraging the use of zero-type constraint equations in the navigation filter. Without external aiding, inertial navigation solutions…
Course estimation is a key component for the development of autonomous navigation systems for robots. While state-of-the-art methods widely use visual-based algorithms, it is worth noting that they all fail to deal with the complexity of…
Rescue vessels are the main actors in maritime safety and rescue operations. At the same time, aerial drones bring a significant advantage into this scenario. This paper presents the research directions of the AutoSOS project, where we work…
The ability to traverse an unknown environment is crucial for autonomous robot operations. However, due to the limited sensing capabilities and system constraints, approaching this problem with a single robot agent can be slow, costly, and…
Planetary exploration missions require robots capable of navigating extreme and unknown environments. While wheeled rovers have dominated past missions, their mobility is limited to traversable surfaces. Legged robots, especially…
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…
Autonomous vehicles such as the Mars rovers currently lead the vanguard of surface exploration on extraterrestrial planets and moons. In order to accelerate the pace of exploration and science objectives, it is critical to plan safe and…
Autonomous terrain classification is an important problem in planetary navigation, whether the goal is to identify scientific sites of interest or to traverse treacherous areas safely. Past Martian rovers have relied on human operators to…
In the future, extraterrestrial expeditions will not only be conducted by rovers but also by flying robots. The technical demonstration drone Ingenuity, that just landed on Mars, will mark the beginning of a new era of exploration…
The successes of previous and current Mars rovers have encouraged space agencies worldwide to pursue additional planetary exploration missions with more ambitious navigation goals. For example, NASA's planned Mars Sample Return mission will…
The ability to efficiently and effectively explore planetary surfaces is currently limited by the capability of wheeled rovers to traverse challenging terrains, and by pre-programmed data acquisition plans with limited in-situ flexibility.…
We present ARTPS (Autonomous Rover Target Prioritization System), a novel hybrid AI system that combines depth estimation, anomaly detection, and learnable curiosity scoring for autonomous exploration of planetary surfaces. Our approach…