Sulfate and iron oxide deposits in Río Tinto (Southwestern Spain) are a terrestrial analog of early martian hematite-rich regions. Understanding the distribution and drivers of microbial life in iron-rich environments […]
In recent years, robotic exploration has become increasingly important in planetary exploration. One area of particular interest for exploration is Martian lava tubes, which have several distinct features of interest.
The interest in exploring planetary bodies for scientific investigation and in-situ resource utilization is ever-rising. Yet, many sites of interest are inaccessible to state-of-the-art planetary exploration robots because of the […]
In this report, we present the system design, operational strategy, and results of coordinated multi-vehicle field demonstrations of autonomous marine robotic technologies in search-for-life missions within the Pacific shelf margin […]
The Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) is a micro-focus X-ray fluorescence spectrometer mounted on the robotic arm of NASA’s Perseverance rover.
Visual localization plays an important role in the positioning and navigation of robotics systems within previously visited environments.
As human space exploration evolves toward longer voyages farther from our home planet, in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) becomes increasingly important. Haptic teleoperations are one of the technologies by which such […]
As natural access points to the subsurface, lava tubes and other caves have become premier targets of planetary missions for astrobiological analyses.
In the expeditionary sciences, spatiotemporally varying environments — hydrothermal plumes, algal blooms, lava flows, or animal migrations — are ubiquitous. Mobile robots are uniquely well-suited to study these dynamic, mesoscale […]
In unstructured environments the best path is not always the shortest, but needs to consider various objectives like energy efficiency, risk of failure or scientific outcome.
