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[Project image] Wide Area Prospecting Using Supervised Autonomous Robots
This project is no longer active.

Head: John Dolan
Contact: Gregg Podnar (gwp@cmu.edu)

Mailing address:
Carnegie Mellon University
Robotics Institute
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213


Associated lab/group: Tele-Supervised Autonomous Robotics

For more information, see this project's homepage.

Jump to: Project Description | Personnel | Publications

Project Description

In January 2004, NASA established a long-term program to extend human presence across the solar system, a primary goal of which will be to establish a human presence on the moon no later than 2020, as a precursor to human exploration of Mars. A central concept of this vision is that future space exploration activities must rely on human and robotic capabilities combined in order to achieve a long-term and well-orchestrated campaign of space exploration. Thus, in order to meet these technological challenges, systems which support safe human supervision of fleets of task-oriented robots will be a necessity for future space exploration endeavors.

Our specific aim is to develop a general and widely applicable architecture for human supervision of a fleet of autonomous robots in support of sustained, affordable, and safe space exploration. We will demonstrate the benefits of this system-of-systems in the particular real-world task of wide-area mineral prospecting.

Together with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the NASA Ames Research Center we will develop a software architecture and system for autonomous cooperative perception, control, coordination, navigation, and information-sharing / management of multiple robots: the Robot Supervision Architecture (RSA).

The RSA comprises three subsystems:

In addition to the RSA, there are two additional subsystems: A fleet of robots such as this is not limited to prospecting; it is also directly applicable to other tasks in other realms such as space assembly, inspection, and maintenance; and planetary prospecting, mining, and construction.

Past members

Name Title Email Address
Jeffrey J Baker Programmer
Marcel's personal homepage Marcel Bergerman Systems Scientist marcel@cmu.edu
H. Benjamin's personal homepage H. Benjamin Brown Project Scientist hbb@cs.cmu.edu
Ronald Conescu Research Associate, CS rconescu@andrew.cmu.edu
John's personal homepage John Dolan Senior Systems Scientist jmd@cs.cmu.edu
Alberto Elfes Principal Member of Technical Staff, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Alan's personal homepage Alan D. Guisewite Webmaster/Special Proj Asst adg@cmu.edu
Ehud Halberstam Research Programmer, RI/ECE ehud@cmu.edu
Kian's personal homepage Kian Hsiang Low PhD Student, ECE
Sandra's personal homepage Sandra Mau Masters Student, RI
Luis Ernesto Navarro-Serment Project Scientist lenscmu@cs.cmu.edu
Gregg's personal homepage Gregg Podnar Program Manager gwp@cmu.edu
Yaron's personal homepage Yaron Rachlin PhD Student, RI/ECE
Uland Wong PhD Student, RI uyw@andrew.cmu.edu

Recent publications [View all 22 publications]

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