The Mission
The objective of the Space exploration scenario is to demonstrate the use of an ADRES consisting of a team of three autonomous cooperative REUs (REU-1 to REU-3) to efficiently explore a planetary surface and to access and explore a lava tube. As explained below, lava tubes and their entry holes (Skylights) are of high scientific relevance, both on the Moon and on Mars. The final demonstration will be performed in a Moon analogue simulation environment, but the CoRob-X ADRES could in principle be used also on Mars or any other planetary body.
The simulation will demonstrate that:
- the ADRES as a team of cooperative robots is able to autonomously take decisions on how to achieve a given task in a cooperative manner. It will do so by re-using the ERGO framework and the work done in OG11 for the CREW (Cooperative Robotics for Enhanced Workforce) component
- the ADRES as a team of autonomous robots will use advanced artificial intelligence to be able to handle exceptional situations in which it is needed to autonomously re-plan the activities, at REU-level or at multi-REU level,
- the ADRES as a team of sensing robots will be able to combine the data from multiple perception sensors at multiple locations to create extended, precise 3-D environment maps;
- the ADRES as a team of robots with specialized and flexibly adaptable locomotion capabilities will be able to explore larger areas faster and handle terrain that is too difficult for other rovers;
- the ADRES as a team of physically interacting Rapelling robots will enable robotic exploration rovers to reach locations that are currently unreachable;
- the ADRES as a team of cooperative scientific robots with SoA science sensors (e.g. Ground Penetrating Radar), high performance perception sensors, and multi-modal data fusion will increase the scientific return of a mission by being able to perform cooperative multi-sensor / multi-modal surveys;
In Order to fulfull this ambitious mission, the CoRob-X project is divided into different mission scenarios: The lunar Mission, the lunar/space analogue Mission and an Terestrial Demonstrator.
Please find all necessary information on each scenario in the section below.
