Scientific Exploration of Challenging Planetary Analog Environments with a Team of Legged Robots
Authors: Philip Arm, Gabriel Waibel, Jan Preisig, Turcan Tuna, Ruyi Zhou, Valentin Bickel, Gabriela Ligeza, Takahiro Miki,
Florian Kehl, Hendrik Kolvenbach, and Marco Hutter
Video
Abstract
The interest in exploring planetary bodies for scientific investigation and in-situ resource utilization is ever-rising.
Yet, many sites of interest are inaccessible to state-of-the-art planetary exploration robots because of the robots’
inability to traverse steep slopes, unstructured terrain, and loose soil. Additionally, current single-robot approaches
only allow a limited exploration speed and a single set of skills. Here, we present a team of legged robots with
complementary skills for exploration missions in challenging planetary analog environments. We equipped
the robots with an efficient locomotion controller, a mapping pipeline for online and post-mission visualization,
instance segmentation to highlight scientific targets, and scientific instruments for remote and in-situ investigation.
Furthermore, we integrated a robotic arm on one of the robots to enable high-precision measurements. Legged
robots can swiftly navigate representative terrains, such as granular slopes beyond 25 degrees, loose soil, and
unstructured terrain, highlighting their advantages compared to wheeled rover systems. We successfully verified
the approach in analog deployments at the BeyondGravity ExoMars rover testbed, in a quarry in Switzerland, and
at the Space Resources Challenge in Luxembourg. Our results show that a team of legged robots with advanced
locomotion, perception, and measurement skills, as well as task-level autonomy, can conduct successful, effective
missions in a short time. Our approach enables the scientific exploration of planetary target sites that are currently
out of human and robotic reach.
Citation
@article{arm2023scientific,
title={Scientific exploration of challenging planetary analog environments with a team of legged robots},
author={Arm, Philip and Waibel, Gabriel and Preisig, Jan and Tuna, Turcan and Zhou, Ruyi and Bickel, Valentin and Ligeza, Gabriela and Miki, Takahiro and Kehl, Florian and Kolvenbach, Hendrik and others},
journal={Science robotics},
volume={8},
number={80},
pages={eade9548},
year={2023},
publisher={American Association for the Advancement of Science}
}