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Project | VaMEx3-RGE

Duration:
Valles Marineris Explorer - Robust Ground Exploration

Valles Marineris Explorer - Robust Ground Exploration

Application fields

The goal of the VaMEx initiative is the development of an autonomous, heterogeneous robot swarm for the exploration of the Valles Marineris on Mars. Driving, walking, and flying systems will use their advantages to cooperatively explore a large area with different environmental characteristics.

The VaMEx-RGE (Valles Marineris Explorer - Robust Ground Exploration) project aims to further develop ground-based mobile units and their navigation technologies. In particular, aspects of multi-robot localization, mapping and navigation, cooperative decision making, exploration and mission planning will be considered, and advanced robotic platforms and sensor systems will be explored.

For safe navigation in unstructured terrain, an increase of the robustness of the walking robot CREX and the exploration rover ARTEMIS on different levels is aimed at. For this purpose, hardware adaptations will be made and the low-level control and locomotion control of the systems will be optimized. Furthermore, both mechanical and electrical interfaces will be provided in order to integrate additional sensor modalities. The robot-specific provision of motion estimation and mapping will also be made available for integration into the swarm, as well as the possibility of specifying waypoints for the systems, which are then safely traversed.

VaMEx Website:
vamex.space

Partners

Universität Bremen - Kognitive Neuroinformatik Universität Bremen - High-Performance Visualization Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg - Lehrstuhl für Hochfrequenztechnik

Contact Person

Leon Cedric Danter, M.Sc.

Publications about the project

  1. VAMEX3: AUTONOMOUSLY EXPLORING MARS WITH A HETEROGENEOUS ROBOT SWARM

    Leon Cedric Danter; Joachim Clemens; Andreas Serov; Anne Schattel; Michael Schleiss; Cedric Liman; Mario Gäbel; Andre Mühlenbrock; Gabriel Zachmann

    In: ASTRA Proceedings. ESA/Estec Symposium on Advanced Space Technologies in Robotics and Automation (ASTRA-2023), 17th Symposium on Advanced Space Technologies in Robotics and Automation, October 18-20, Leiden, Netherlands, European Space Agency (ESA), 2023.

Sponsors

BMWK - Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action

50NA2204B

BMWK - Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action