Related papers: MARTIAN: A Rendering Framework for Aerial Mars Ima…
Risk to human astronauts and interplanetary distance causing slow and limited communication drives scientists to pursue an autonomous approach to exploring distant planets, such as Mars. A portion of exploration of Mars has been conducted…
This paper presents OpenREALM, a real-time mapping framework for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). A camera attached to the onboard computer of a moving UAV is utilized to acquire high resolution image mosaics of a targeted area of interest.…
In this paper, we propose a scene-level inverse rendering framework that uses multi-view images to decompose the scene into geometry, SVBRDF, and 3D spatially-varying lighting. While multi-view images have been widely used for object-level…
The current inventory of recent (fresh) impacts on Mars shows a strong bias towards areas of low thermal inertia. These areas are generally visually bright, and impacts create dark scours and rays that make them easier to detect. It is…
Accurate material retrieval is critical for creating realistic 3D assets. Existing methods rely on datasets that capture shape-invariant and lighting-varied representations of materials, which are scarce and face challenges due to limited…
This paper presents Navigation and Rendering Pipeline for Astronautics (NaRPA) - a novel ray-tracing-based computer graphics engine to model and simulate light transport for space-borne imaging. NaRPA incorporates lighting models with…
Accurate localisation in planetary robotics enables the advanced autonomy required to support the increased scale and scope of future missions. The successes of the Ingenuity helicopter and multiple planetary orbiters lay the groundwork for…
We propose a scene-level inverse rendering framework that uses multi-view images to decompose the scene into geometry, a SVBRDF, and 3D spatially-varying lighting. Because multi-view images provide a variety of information about the scene,…
The next generation of Mars rotorcrafts requires on-board autonomous hazard avoidance landing. To this end, this work proposes a system that performs continuous multi-resolution height map reconstruction and safe landing spot detection.…
Under a terraforming scenario, a reactivated hydrological cycle on Mars will result in upwards movement of water due to evaporation and precipitation. If Mars' embryonic fossilized catchments provide inadequate drainage, Mars' limited…
Image Processing algorithms for vision-based navigation require reliable image simulation capacities. In this paper we explain why traditional rendering engines may present limitations that are potentially critical for space applications.…
Nowadays, autonomous cars can drive smoothly in ordinary cases, and it is widely recognized that realistic sensor simulation will play a critical role in solving remaining corner cases by simulating them. To this end, we propose an…
Remote sensing observations and Mars rover missions have recorded the presence of beaches, salt lakes, and wind erosion landforms in Martian sediments. All these observations indicate that Mars was hydrated in its early history. There used…
In this paper we introduce a vision-aided navigation (VAN) pipeline designed to support ground navigation of autonomous aircraft. The proposed algorithm combines the computational efficiency of indirect methods with the robustness of direct…
Visual perception is an important component for autonomous navigation of unmanned surface vessels (USV), particularly for the tasks related to autonomous inspection and tracking. These tasks involve vision-based navigation techniques to…
We present MLNav, a learning-enhanced path planning framework for safety-critical and resource-limited systems operating in complex environments, such as rovers navigating on Mars. MLNav makes judicious use of machine learning to enhance…
Stereo images captured by Mars rovers are transmitted after lossy compression due to the limited bandwidth between Mars and Earth. Unfortunately, this process results in undesirable compression artifacts. In this paper, we present a novel…
We propose a novel visual localization and navigation framework for real-world environments directly integrating observed visual information into the bird-eye-view map. While the renderable neural radiance map (RNR-Map) shows considerable…
To expedite space exploration on Mars, it is indispensable to develop an efficient Martian image compression method for transmitting images through the constrained Mars-to-Earth communication channel. Although the existing learned…
The surge of deep-space probes makes it unsustainable to navigate them with standard radiometric tracking. Self-driving interplanetary satellites represent a solution to this problem. In this work, a full vision-based navigation algorithm…