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VaMEx-CoSMiC

Swarm exploration on Mars

The project Valles Marineris Explorer (VaMEx) – Cooperative Swarm Navigation, Mission and Control (CoSMiC) investigates innovative approaches for infrastructure-less navigation and exploration for highly automated heterogeneous robotic swarms exploring Valles Marineris on Mars. Resulting technologies are key enablers to explore the largest valley in our solar system which is possibly a refuge for extraterrestrial life.

Goals

Rapid automated, infrastructure-less navigation and exploration in difficult terrain

• Robust swarm coordination and control
• Cooperative swarm navigation and swarm exploration
• Decentralized algorithms for robust navigation
• Experimental verification with rovers and multicopters

Key Issues

Along the Martian equator, the Valles Marineris extends over 4,000 kilometers with a depth of 7 kilometer. It is the largest valley in the solar system and possibly a refuge for extraterrestrial life. Only a versatile robotic swarm capable of intelligent, infrastructure-less navigation can explore the slopes, gorges, canyons, and caves in the Valles Marineris to search for extraterrestrial life. It is faster, more reliable, diverse, flexible, upgradeable, and cost effective than a single highly flexible, but also expensive robotic or crewed mission. Hence, VaMEx-CoSMiC develops highly innovative infrastructure-less navigation and exploration technologies for automated, heterogeneous, and versatile robotic swarm exploration missions:

• Cooperative swarm navigation through radio communication, relative radio localization and positioning algorithms, leap frog and return-to-base navigation
• Rapid automated, infrastructure-less navigation in difficult terrain using on-board inertial navigation systems (INS), laser scanners, and cameras of each swarm element together with simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), cooperative feature extraction, and landmark based and cooperative optical navigation
• Swarm coordination and control for following a trajectory and keeping a swarm constellation
• Robust flight control handling sensor failure and degraded systems
• Decentralized exploration algorithms
• Simulation and experimental verification of the above technologies with unmanned aerial and ground vehicles (UAVs and UGVs), i.e., multicopters and rovers.

The Institute of Communication and Navigation of DLR contributes in VaMEx-CoSMiC to the development of:

• Swarm coordination and control algorithms for following a trajectory and keeping a swarm constellation
• Radio communication to transmit scientific data and to exchange navigation information for cooperative swarm navigation
• Relative radio localization and positioning algorithms for cooperative swarm navigation
• Combining the relative radio localization and radio communication for cooperative swarm navigation
• Decentralized exploration algorithms
• Simulation and experimental verification of the above technologies with several rovers.

Partners

Institute of Flight Guidance, TU Braunschweig (Technical Coordinator)
Institutes of Flight Systems Dynamics and for Communications and Navigation, TU Munich
Institute of Communication and Navigation, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen

This project is part of the VaMEx initiative funded by the DLR Space Administration.

Duration

01.09.2015 - 31.08.2018