Internal Simulation for Autonomous Robot Exploration of Lava Tubes

Raúl Domínguez, Sascha Arnold, Christoph Hertzberg, Arne Böckmann

2018

Abstract

Space Exploration stands as one of the most challenging endeavors of our time. Extraterrestrial caves in particular have been identified by the scientific community as of great interest. They could be suitable for allocating astronaut planetary stations, but little is known about them. In this paper, we describe and analyze robotic cave exploration using internal simulation and SLAM technologies and provide experimental results. The experiments were performed in a lava tube selected due to its representativeness as space analog. Expensive mission costs, communication constraints and navigational challenges in space missions demand highly developed degrees of autonomy and safety on the robots. For this reason, our solution incorporates methods for the validation of paths based on on-board, internal simulation. The methods provide the means to increase the confidence of successful executions by simulating using physics models the planned path. A highly realistic model of the robot and an on-line generated model of the environment are required. Assuming the demands of the space robotics scenario, all software runs on-board.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Domínguez R., Arnold S., Hertzberg C. and Böckmann A. (2018). Internal Simulation for Autonomous Robot Exploration of Lava Tubes.In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 2: ICINCO, ISBN 978-989-758-321-6, pages 144-155. DOI: 10.5220/0006860701440155

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icinco18,
author={Raúl Domínguez and Sascha Arnold and Christoph Hertzberg and Arne Böckmann},
title={Internal Simulation for Autonomous Robot Exploration of Lava Tubes},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 2: ICINCO,},
year={2018},
pages={144-155},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006860701440155},
isbn={978-989-758-321-6},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 2: ICINCO,
TI - Internal Simulation for Autonomous Robot Exploration of Lava Tubes
SN - 978-989-758-321-6
AU - Domínguez R.
AU - Arnold S.
AU - Hertzberg C.
AU - Böckmann A.
PY - 2018
SP - 144
EP - 155
DO - 10.5220/0006860701440155