17 accepted papers
Climbing robots face significant challenges when navigating unstructured environments, where reliable attachment to irregular surfaces is critical. We present a novel mobile climbing robot equipped with compliant pin-array structured grippers that passively conform to surface irregularities, ensurin…
In lunar and planetary exploration, legged robots have attracted significant attention as an alternative to conventional wheeled robots, which struggle to traverse rough and uneven terrain. To enable locomotion over highly irregular and steeply inclined surfaces, limbed climbing robots equipped with…
Modular robots offer a promising solution for building versatile and adaptable robotic systems. For instance, space exploration robots can be designed to reconfigure to meet diverse task demands across varying environments. However, training such systems by Reinforcement Learning (RL) remains challe…
The allure of lunar surface exploration and development has recently captured widespread global attention. Robots have proved to be indispensable for exploring uncharted terrains, uncovering and leveraging local resources, and facilitating the construction of future human habitats. In this article, …
Modular robotics holds immense potential for space exploration, where reliability, repairability, and reusability are critical for cost-effective missions. Coordination between heterogeneous units is paramount for precision tasks - whether in manipulation, legged locomotion, or multi-robot interacti
In this letter, we present tightly coupled LiDAR-IMU-leg odometry, which is robust to challenging conditions such as featureless environments and deformable terrains. We developed an online learning-based leg kinematics model named the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xli
The exploration of the lunar poles and the collection of samples from the martian surface are characterized by shorter time windows demanding increased autonomy and speeds. Autonomous mobile robots must intrinsically cope with a wider range of disturbances. Faster off-road navigation has been explor
Developing algorithms for extra-terrestrial robotic exploration has always been challenging. Along with the complexity associated with these environments, one of the main issues remains the evaluation of said algorithms. With the regained interest in lunar exploration, there is also a demand for qua…
The ability to associate the current location with previously visited places is an essential aspect of autonomous ground robots. Unstructured environments such as planetary surfaces pose a significant challenge for robots because their terrain is less distinctive. Meanwhile, traversability must be a…
Robotic mobility in microgravity is necessary to expand human utilization and exploration of outer space. Bio-inspired multi-legged robots are a possible solution for safe and precise locomotion. However, a dynamic motion of a robot in microgravity can lead to failures due to gripper detachment caus…
This paper presents the modeling and analysis of a novel moving mechanism "tumbling" for asteroid exploration. The system actuation is provided by an internal motor and torque wheel; elastic spring-mounted spikes are attached to the perimeter of a circular-shaped robot, protruding normal to the surf…
In this letter, we present a passive spine gripper that can hold rough rocky surfaces of boulders on cliff walls, and we discuss its application to a four-limbed robot for free-climbing in extreme terrain. The limbed robot has four degrees of freedom in each limb, where three are to drive joints of
A wheeled mobile robot traveling on loose soil has wheels with grousers (i.e., lugs) on their surface to improve its mobility performance. Although previous studies have analysis and modeling of the mobility performance of a wheel with grousers, most of them did not cover the stress distribution of
The surface of a minor body in space features a harsh terrain and microgravity. To explore such surfaces in detail, a robot with an appropriate moving mechanism is required. To this end, we proposed a robot that moves by gripping the surface like a rock climber. We focus on the robot's gait, where t
Owing to the irregular terrain and microgravity environment of an asteroid, an appropriate locomotion mechanism is required for exploring the asteroid by a robot. In this paper, a ground grip locomotive robot is proposed. One of the most important requirements of the robot is the development of the…