Astro Drone

Contribute to science by playing the Astro Drone game! While you fly with a Parrot AR drone in the real world, you are performing space missions in augmented reality. If you join the experiment, the images onboard the drone are processed so that we can teach robots to better evaluate distances in their environment. The Astro Drone app is available for free download here.

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Space Gaits

Currently, there are some walking robots under design for specific planets such as Mars. However, there is no general understanding of how different robots would best walk in different space environments such as Mars, the Moon, or an asteroid. In this project, we will analyze the walking gaits of robots optimized for a range of gravity conditions.

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Time-To-Contact for spacecraft landing

In a previous study, spacecraft landing on the basis of ventral optic flow was studied, mimicking the landing of honey bees. Here, ventral flow is complemented by the time-to-contact, leading to robust and mass-efficient landings using easily calculated visual cues.

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Scent of Science

Male moths can use the odor of female moths to reliably localize them, even if the air is turbulent and the odor largely dispersed. Can we use similar strategies to find scientifically interesting locations in space?

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Evolutionary robotics for satellite swarms

In this project, the evolutionary robotics methodology is applied to the control of satellites in a swarm. Preliminary findings indicate high accuracy control of satellite formation locations and attitude, even for asymmetric formations. The goal is to validate these results on the sphere "satellites" on the International Space Station.

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