The Helmholtz Alliance "Robotic Exploration Under Extreme Conditions – ROBEX" brings together space and deep sea research communities to collaborate and perform joint research on using robotic and other technologies to explore extreme environments.
Projekt Details
In the context of this project, a total of 16 institutions spreading all over Germany are developing technologies that are needed to perform research and exploration in areas with extreme environmental conditions such as the deep sea, the polar regions, our moon as well as other celestial bodies.
Long Range Navigation Tests (LRNTs)
During the ROBEX demo mission space campaign that took place during June–July 2017 on Mt. Etna, Italy, we performed some Long Range Navigation Tests. We performed these tests to collect datasets that are useful to evaluate the performance of pose estimation and navigation algorithms in unstructured GPS-denied environments like extraplanetary surfaces for navigation over long distances. We provide two such datasets to the robotics community for testing their pose estimation and navigation algorithms. The datasets were collected during two runs of approximately 1km in length. The datasets contain navigation relevant data from then rover i.e. IMU, Visual Odometry and Wheel Odometry. Along with the datasets, ground truth collected using DGPS modules is also provided which is needed to evaluate the pose estimation computed using the sensor data. The datasets can be obtained at www.robex-allianz.de/datasets/.