Autonomous Robotic Exploration for Extreme Space Environments
Dr. Wolfgang Fink
(University of Arizona, Tucson, USA)
Freitag/Friday, 2013-12-20, 14:00 s.t., EW 015
Eugene-Paul-Wigner Gebäude, Hardenbergstr. 36, 10623 Berlin
Zusammenfassung/Abstract:
Robotic exploration is called for in extreme space environments, including planetary atmospheres, surfaces, and subsurfaces, as well as in potentially hazardous or inaccessible operational areas on Earth. Such future missions will require increasing degrees of operational autonomy, especially when following up on transient events.
Operational autonomy requires:
- Automatic characterization of operational areas from different vantages;
- automatic sensor deployment and data gathering;
- automatic feature extraction and region-of-interest identification;
- automatic target prediction and prioritization;
- and subsequent automatic (re-)deployment and navigation of robotic agents.
The talk reports on the development of a robotic test bed for a NASA award-winning mission paradigm, termed "Tier-scalable Reconnaissance", as the foundation for autonomous C4ISR systems of the future. In addition to aerial platforms, the test bed currently comprises several worldwide computer- controllable land and sea rovers equipped with a variety of sensors for autonomous operations in aerial, terrestrial, and riverine/maritime environments. Moreover, the talk discusses some mathematical approaches for instilling autonomy into robotic platforms.