Advanced science. Applied technology.
For more than 35 years, SwRI has been developing innovative automation and robotics solutions. World-class experts and experienced engineers comprise the automation engineering staff. Automation engineering facilities include state-of-the-art laboratories and large prototype areas for development.
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) is tackling robotics and autonomy challenges here on Earth and in space. This article focuses on our work to adapt terrestrial technology for space applications to enable autonomous mobile robot operations for the Moon and other planets.
Earlier this year we had the opportunity to meet with space scientists, cavers, and roboticists to discuss the future of cave exploration for both on- and off-world environments at the 4th International Planetary Caves Conference in Lanzarote, Spain. A topic often discussed in the space community is how to effectively use robots to perform the range of exploration tasks necessary for previously unexplored environments, such as caves.
Computing in space tends to be constrained by the size, weight, power and cost of radiation-hardened systems that can fit on spacecraft. Historically, these constraints have ruled out deployment of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications, which require substantial memory and power to automate image detection and other tasks.
