Autonomous Robots for In-situ Surface Exploration (ARISE)

Future lunar exploration missions will target regions that hold significant potential for transformative

scientific discovery as well as In Situ Research Utilisation (ISRU). Efficient exploration and analysis of

these areas requires robust novel solutions to deploy existing, high TRL scientific instruments. We propose a highly autonomous robot team approach, which will allow a single operator to control a

scalable group of heterogeneous systems while also providing the needed systems to monitor the team

and intervene where necessary. This includes the necessary systems for a team of different robots to

effectively define, share and execute tasks, and tooling for the operator to scale the degree of autonomy

depending on the occurring situations, switching between full autonomy-assisted teleoperation and

several control schemes in between.

Among traditional, wheeled robotic systems, we propose to utilize state-of-the-art walking (legged)

robots to simulate a lunar prospecting mission. The robots use cutting-edge locomotion control

techniques and autonomous operation modes to swiftly overcome obstacles and traverse challenging

terrain. The robotic systems can be equipped with a top-mounted robotic arm and a scientific payload

suite, such as, for example, a UV-VIS-NIR microscope and context imager, as well as spectrometers

to perform rapid sample analysis in the target region.

The team is composed of ambitious - junior and senior - experts from industry, academia in the field of

robotics, payload engineering, and planetary science, eager to push the limits of lunar resource

prospecting.