REALMS: Resilient exploration and lunar mapping system
Space resource utilisation is opening a new space era. The scientific proof of the presence of water ice on the south pole of the Moon, the recent advances in oxygen extraction from lunar regolith, and its use as a material to build shelters are positioning the Moon, again, at the centre of importan...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:10097953 2023-06-06T11:59:23+02:00 REALMS: Resilient exploration and lunar mapping system van der Meer, D. Chovet, L. Bera, A. Richard, A. Sánchez Cuevas, Pedro Jesus Sánchez-Ibáñez, J. R. Olivares-Mendez, M. 2023-03-30 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10097953/ https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2023.1127496 en eng Frontiers Media S.A. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10097953/ http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2023.1127496 Copyright © 2023 van der Meer, Chovet, Bera, Richard, Sánchez Cuevas, Sánchez-Ibáñez and Olivares-Mendez. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Front Robot AI Robotics and AI Text 2023 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2023.1127496 2023-04-16T01:26:29Z Space resource utilisation is opening a new space era. The scientific proof of the presence of water ice on the south pole of the Moon, the recent advances in oxygen extraction from lunar regolith, and its use as a material to build shelters are positioning the Moon, again, at the centre of important space programs. These worldwide programs, led by ARTEMIS, expect robotics to be the disrupting technology enabling humankind’s next giant leap. However, Moon robots require a high level of autonomy to perform lunar exploration tasks more efficiently without being constantly controlled from Earth. Furthermore, having more than one robotic system will increase the resilience and robustness of the global system, improving its success rate, as well as providing additional redundancy. This paper introduces the Resilient Exploration and Lunar Mapping System, developed with a scalable architecture for semi-autonomous lunar mapping. It leverages Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping techniques on multiple rovers to map large lunar environments. Several resilience mechanisms are implemented, such as two-agent redundancy, delay invariant communications, a multi-master architecture different control modes. This study presents the experimental results of REALMS with two robots and its potential to be scaled to a larger number of robots, increasing the map coverage and system redundancy. The system’s performance is verified and validated in a lunar analogue facility, and a larger lunar environment during the European Space Agency (ESA)-European Space Resources Innovation Centre Space Resources Challenge. The results of the different experiments show the efficiency of REALMS and the benefits of using semi-autonomous systems. Text South pole PubMed Central (PMC) South Pole Frontiers in Robotics and AI 10 |
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Robotics and AI van der Meer, D. Chovet, L. Bera, A. Richard, A. Sánchez Cuevas, Pedro Jesus Sánchez-Ibáñez, J. R. Olivares-Mendez, M. REALMS: Resilient exploration and lunar mapping system |
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Robotics and AI |
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Space resource utilisation is opening a new space era. The scientific proof of the presence of water ice on the south pole of the Moon, the recent advances in oxygen extraction from lunar regolith, and its use as a material to build shelters are positioning the Moon, again, at the centre of important space programs. These worldwide programs, led by ARTEMIS, expect robotics to be the disrupting technology enabling humankind’s next giant leap. However, Moon robots require a high level of autonomy to perform lunar exploration tasks more efficiently without being constantly controlled from Earth. Furthermore, having more than one robotic system will increase the resilience and robustness of the global system, improving its success rate, as well as providing additional redundancy. This paper introduces the Resilient Exploration and Lunar Mapping System, developed with a scalable architecture for semi-autonomous lunar mapping. It leverages Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping techniques on multiple rovers to map large lunar environments. Several resilience mechanisms are implemented, such as two-agent redundancy, delay invariant communications, a multi-master architecture different control modes. This study presents the experimental results of REALMS with two robots and its potential to be scaled to a larger number of robots, increasing the map coverage and system redundancy. The system’s performance is verified and validated in a lunar analogue facility, and a larger lunar environment during the European Space Agency (ESA)-European Space Resources Innovation Centre Space Resources Challenge. The results of the different experiments show the efficiency of REALMS and the benefits of using semi-autonomous systems. |
format |
Text |
author |
van der Meer, D. Chovet, L. Bera, A. Richard, A. Sánchez Cuevas, Pedro Jesus Sánchez-Ibáñez, J. R. Olivares-Mendez, M. |
author_facet |
van der Meer, D. Chovet, L. Bera, A. Richard, A. Sánchez Cuevas, Pedro Jesus Sánchez-Ibáñez, J. R. Olivares-Mendez, M. |
author_sort |
van der Meer, D. |
title |
REALMS: Resilient exploration and lunar mapping system |
title_short |
REALMS: Resilient exploration and lunar mapping system |
title_full |
REALMS: Resilient exploration and lunar mapping system |
title_fullStr |
REALMS: Resilient exploration and lunar mapping system |
title_full_unstemmed |
REALMS: Resilient exploration and lunar mapping system |
title_sort |
realms: resilient exploration and lunar mapping system |
publisher |
Frontiers Media S.A. |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10097953/ https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2023.1127496 |
geographic |
South Pole |
geographic_facet |
South Pole |
genre |
South pole |
genre_facet |
South pole |
op_source |
Front Robot AI |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10097953/ http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2023.1127496 |
op_rights |
Copyright © 2023 van der Meer, Chovet, Bera, Richard, Sánchez Cuevas, Sánchez-Ibáñez and Olivares-Mendez. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2023.1127496 |
container_title |
Frontiers in Robotics and AI |
container_volume |
10 |
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