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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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Autores principales: van der Meer, D., Chovet, L., Bera, A., Richard, A., Sánchez Cuevas, Pedro Jesus, Sánchez-Ibáñez, J. R., Olivares-Mendez, M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10097953/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37064576
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2023.1127496
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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.
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-100979532023-04-14 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. Front Robot AI Robotics and AI 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. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-03-30 /pmc/articles/PMC10097953/ /pubmed/37064576 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2023.1127496 Text en 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.
spellingShingle 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
title 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_short REALMS: Resilient exploration and lunar mapping system
title_sort realms: resilient exploration and lunar mapping system
topic Robotics and AI
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10097953/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37064576
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2023.1127496
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