Yang Gao

King's College London · Engineering

This paper details the architectural design and implementation of a new AI-enabled Computer Vision (AI-CV) Framework developed in ViBEKO activity. The AI-CV Framework combines an AI platform and a Mission Control System (MCS). The AI platform selected was ESA's AInabler infrastructure based on the Kubeflow platform, and ONE-CC was selected as the M...

To extend planetary exploration beyond the current limitations of wheeled vehicles while preserving reliability, simplicity, and efficiency, actuation can be judiciously incorporated into the locomotion system. Based on a static analysis, we propose a new four‐wheeled chassis concept for planetary rovers that can traverse more challenging terrain w...

The Enhanced Model Reference Adaptive Control (EMRAC) algorithm, augmenting the MRAC strategy with adaptive integral and adaptive switching control actions, is an effective solution to impose reference dynamics to plants affected by parameter uncertainties, unmodeled dynamics and disturbances. However, the design of the EMRAC solutions has so far b...

Verifying that autonomous space robotic software behaves correctly is crucial, particularly since such software is often mission-critical, that is, a software failure can lead to mission failure. In this paper, we describe the process that we used to verify the autonomous grasp generation and capturing operation of a spent rocket stage in space. Th...

Improving the efficiency of a subsurface sample acquisition process provides operational benefits such as reduced bit wear and power consumption, and may increase the sample fidelity by minimising alterations caused by the drilling operation to the surrounding substrate. This could be achieved by acquiring multiple samples during a single drilling...

Driving energy consumption plays an important role in the navigation of autonomous mobile robots in off-road scenarios. However, the accuracy of the driving energy predictions is often affected by a high degree of uncertainty due to unknown and constantly varying terrain properties, and the complex wheel-terrain interaction in unstructured terrains...

Driving energy consumption plays an important role in the navigation of autonomous mobile robots in off-road scenarios. However, the accuracy of the driving energy predictions is often affected by a high degree of uncertainty due to unknown and constantly varying terrain properties, and the complex wheel-terrain interaction in unstructured terrains...

This paper presents an adaptive energy-aware prediction and planning framework for vehicles navigating over terrains with varying and unknown properties. A novel feature of the method is the use of a deep meta-learning framework to learn a prior energy model, which can efficiently adapt to the local terrain conditions based on small quantities of e...

p>Driving energy consumption plays a major role in the navigation of autonomous mobile robots in off-road scenarios. However, real-time constraints often limit the accuracy of the energy estimations, especially in scenarios where accurate wheel-terrain interactions are complex to model. This paper reports on first results of an adaptive deep meta-l...

Active debris removal in space has become a necessary activity to maintain and facilitate orbital operations. Current approaches tend to adopt autonomous robotic systems which are often furnished with a robotic arm to safely capture debris by identifying a suitable grasping point. These systems are controlled by mission-critical software, where a s...

This paper presents an adaptive energy-aware prediction and planning framework for vehicles navigating over terrains with varying and unknown properties. A novel feature of the method is the use of a deep meta-learning framework to learn a prior energy model, which can efficiently adapt to the local terrain conditions based on small quantities of e...

Driving energy consumption plays an important role in the navigation of autonomous mobile robots in off-road scenarios. However, the accuracy of the driving energy predictions is often affected by a high degree of uncertainty due to unknown and constantly varying terrain properties, and the complex wheel-terrain interaction in unstructured terrains...

Space robotics and autonomous systems (Space RAS) play a critical role in the current and future development of mission-defined machines that can survive in space while performing exploration, assembly, construction, maintenance and servicing tasks. They represent a multi-disciplinary emerging field at the intersection of space engineering, terrest...

Industries move toward the replacement of labours engaged in dangerous tasks with fully automated systems. The sixth sense technology aims at achieving that by integrating different technologies in such a way that enables monitoring of industrial plants and predicting any faults that could happen. One important module of the sixth sense technology...

Terrain traversability analysis plays a major role in ensuring safe robotic navigation in unstructured environments. However, real-time constraints frequently limit the accuracy of online tests especially in scenarios where realistic robot-terrain interactions are complex to model. In this context, we propose a deep learning framework trained in an...

Industries move toward the replacement of labours engaged in dangerous tasks with fully automated systems. The sixth sense technology aims at achieving that by integrating different technologies in such a way that enables monitoring of industrial plants and predicting any faults that could happen. One important module of the sixth sense technology...

The increased complexity of the tasks that on-orbit robots have to undertake has led to an increased need for manipulation dexterity. Space robots can become more dexterous by adopting grasping and manipulation methodologies and algorithms from terrestrial robots. In this paper, we present a novel methodology for evaluating the stability of a robot...

Conventional spacecraft Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) architectures have been designed to receive and execute commands from ground control with minimal automation and autonomy onboard spacecraft. In contrast, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based systems can allow real-time decision-making by considering system information that is difficult...

Terrain traversability analysis plays a major role in ensuring safe robotic navigation in unstructured environments. However, real-time constraints frequently limit the accuracy of online tests, especially in scenarios where realistic robot-terrain interactions are complex to model. In this context, we propose a deep learning framework, trained in...

This paper adds on to the on-going efforts to provide more autonomy to space robots and introduces the concept of programming by demonstration or imitation learning for trajectory planning of manipulators on free-floating spacecraft. A redundant 7-DoF robotic arm is mounted on small spacecraft dedicated for debris removal, on-orbit servicing and as...

Driving energy consumption plays a major role in the navigation of mobile robots in challenging environments, especially if they are left to operate unattended under limited on-board power. This paper reports on first results of an energy-aware path planner, which can provide estimates of the driving energy consumption and energy recovery of a robo...

Gaze tracking is widely used in fatigue driving detection, eye disease diagnosis, mental illness diagnosis, website or advertising design, virtual reality, gaze-control devices and human-computer interaction. However, the influence of light, specular reflection and occlusion, the change of head pose, especially the ever-changing human pose in natur...

This article presents a novel hybrid evolution of the biologically-inspired dual-reciprocating drill (DRD). The proposed system combines the reciprocation motion used by previous iterations of the wood wasp drill with a proposed new undulatory/oscillation motion. This is inspired by the caudal fins of marine creatures, which use this motion to gene...

Water ice and other volatile compounds found in permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles have attracted the interests of space agencies and private companies due to their great potential for in-situ resource utilization and scientific breakthroughs. This paper presents the mission design and trade-off analyses of the Volatile Mineralogy Ma...

This paper describes a novel approach on orbital target capturing of a spent Apogee Kick Motor (AKM), by using robotic finger contact stability analysis similarly to terrestrial robotics. The surface curvature of the nozzle offers a robust candidate contact point. The stability of the grasp is assessed according to the Intrinsic Stiffness Matrix of...

In recent years, there is an increasing demand for orbital robotic missions for various reasons such as lifeextension of functional satellites, reuse the unique orbital slots and to reduce the risk of orbital collision. In such robotic missions, the satellite’s autonomous navigation capability is a critical component that enables it to perform rela...

Present inspection techniques in place at the Joint European Torus (JET), as well as some of those planned for ITER make use of robotically deployed inspection systems, which typically collect data for offline analysis. This can be a slow, laborious process with subjective or error-prone results. There are significant benefits to be gained through...

The dual-reciprocating drill (DRD) is a low-mass alternative to traditional drilling techniques biologically inspired by the wood wasp ovipositor, which is used to drill into wood in order to lay its eggs. The DRD reciprocates two halves lined with backwards-facing teeth, enabling it to generate traction forces that reduce the required overhead pen...

Opportunities and Challenges in Space Robotics

This contribution introduces the development of an intelligent monitoring and control framework for chemical processes, integrating the advantages of Industry 4.0 technologies, cooperative control and fault detection via wireless sensor networks. Using information on the process' structure and behaviour, equipment information, and expert knowledge,...

Recently, the fifth-generation (5G) cellular system has been standardised. As opposed to legacy cellular systems geared towards broadband services, the 5G system identifies key use cases for ultra-reliable and low latency communications (URLLC) and massive machine-type communications (mMTC). These intrinsic 5G capabilities enable promising sensor-b...

Iris center localization is the basis of iris biometrics, face recognition and gaze tracking. However, individual differences, changes in facial expression, varying light conditions, occlusion, and so on, all bring great challenges to accurately localize the iris center. In order to improve localization accuracy in low-quality images and meet the n...

In the above article [1] , the affiliations of authors Lihong Dai and Yang Gao need to be corrected. Moreover, the biography of Yang Gao needs to be corrected. The specific corrections are as follows.

Astrophysicists demand larger (mirror diameter > 10m) space optical telescopes to investigate more distant events that happened during the very early period of the universe, for example formations of the earliest stars. The deployable telescope design like James Webb Space Telescope that has a 6.5m diameter primary mirror has already reached the ca...

On-orbit proximity operations in space rendezvous , docking and debris removal require precise and robust 6D pose estimation under a wide range of lighting conditions and against highly textured background, i.e., the Earth. This paper investigates leveraging deep learning and pho-torealistic rendering for monocular pose estimation of known uncooper...

On-orbit proximity operations in space rendezvous, docking and debris removal require precise and robust 6D pose estimation under a wide range of lighting conditions and against highly textured background, i.e., the Earth. This paper investigates leveraging deep learning and photorealistic rendering for monocular pose estimation of known uncooperat...

As massive scientific information is trapped inside the geologic formation of planetary bodies, the objectives of most exploration missions mainly involve sampling, in-situ testing and analyzing of the cutting’s formation for seeking any sign of primitive life or resources. This can be accomplished by subsurface exploration by specific drilling tec...

To rigidly grasp an orbital target, an autonomous spacecraft needs specially designed end-effectors that are complicated , costly, and hard to generalise to other objects. This paper addresses the orbital grasping problem by introducing a grasp planner for generating stable contact points on orbital structures. The surface of an Apogee Kick Motor i...

By measuring the centroid of a beam on a detector, one can track the movement of that beam across the detector. By tracking this movement, one can track the object encompassing the detector, for example, a spacecraft. A variety of system-specific performance inhibitors can make this a challenge, requiring a robust calibration method. The goal of th...

This contribution introduces a framework for the fault detection and healing of chemical processes over wireless sensor networks. The approach considers the development of a hybrid system which consists of a fault detection method based on machine learning, a wireless communication model and an ontology-based multi-agent system with a cooperative c...

Industry 4.0 is transforming chemical processes into complex, smart cyber-physical systems that require intelligent methods to support the operators in taking decisions for better and safer operation. In this paper, a multi-agent cooperative-based model predictive system for monitoring and control of a chemical pro-cess is proposed. This system use...

This paper presents CAPE, a method to extract planes and cylinder segments from organized point clouds, which processes 640x480 depth images on a single CPU core at an average of 300 Hz, by operating on a grid of planar cells. While, compared to state-of-the-art plane extraction, the latency of CAPE is more consistent and 4-10 times faster, dependi...

There is evidence that water-ice exists on a number of bodies in the solar system. As ice deposits may contain biomarkers that indicate the presence of life, or can be used as a consumable resource for future missions, confirming these observations with in-situ measurements is of great interest. Missions aiming to do this must consider how the pres...

The low-cost and short-lead time of small satellites has led to their use in science-based missions, earth observation, and interplanetary missions. Today, they are also key instruments in orchestrating technological demonstrations for On-Orbit Operations (O <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xli...

A number of low-cost open-loop slew control algorithms have been developed for prolate spinning spacecraft using single-thruster actuation. Robustness analysis indicates that these algorithms have high sensitiveness over thruster firing time error, spacecraft inertia error, and especially spin rate perturbations. This paper proposed two novel feedb...

Redundant and non-operational buildings at nuclear sites are decommissioned over a period of time. The process involves demolition of physical infrastructure resulting in large quantities of residual waste material. The resulting waste materials are packed into import containers to be delivered for post-processing, containing either sealed canister...

LunaResurs is a joint ESA-Roscosmos mission to land at the lunar south pole to search for minerals and water. Neptec UK is providing the landing sensor for this mission, a LIDAR instrument that enables the lander to avoid uneven terrain. Named LEIA-the LIDAR for Extra-terrestrial Imaging Applications-this instrument will provide 3D mapping of the l...

PROBA-3 is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission to study the Sun's corona, and is the world's first precision formation flying mission. The mission will comprise a pair of satellites separated by 150 m, whose relative displacement must be monitored to within 300 µm in order to produce an accurate coronagraph. This measurement is provided by FLLS-t...

This work proposes a robust visual odometry method for structured environments that combines point features with line and plane segments, extracted through an RGB-D camera. Noisy depth maps are processed by a probabilistic depth fusion framework based on Mixtures of Gaussians to denoise and derive the depth uncertainty, which is then propagated thr...

In many types of space mission there is a constant desire for larger and larger instrument apertures, primarily for the purposes of increased resolution or sensitivity. In the Radio Frequency domain, this is currently addressed by antennas that unfold or deploy on-orbit. However, in the optical and infrared domains, this is a significantly more cha...

Active depth cameras suffer from several limitations, which cause incomplete and noisy depth maps, and may consequently affect the performance of RGB-D Odometry. To address this issue, this paper presents a visual odometry method based on point and line features that leverages both measurements from a depth sensor and depth estimates from camera mo...

Robotics and autonomous systems have been instrumental to space exploration by enabling scientific breakthroughs and by fulfilling human curiosity and ambition to conquer new worlds. We provide an overview of space robotics as a rapidly emerging field, covering basic concepts, definitions, historical context, and evolution. We further present a tec...

The ability to accurately place robotic arm payloads on a target is critical to investigate scientifically interesting sites for sample handling missions such as Mars Sample Return (MSR), and its precursor missions (e.g. to Phobos or to the Moon). A new innovative technique is presented within this paper which uses visual data to control the positi...

This work proposes a visual odometry method that combines points and plane primitives, extracted from a noisy depth camera. Depth measurement uncertainty is modelled and propagated through the extraction of geometric primitives to the frame-to-frame motion estimation, where pose is optimized by weighting the residuals of 3D point and planes matches...

This work investigates the potential use of direct ultrasonic vibration as an aid to penetration of granular material. Compared with non-ultrasonic penetration, required forces have been observed to reduce by an order of magnitude. Similarly, total consumed power can be reduced by up to 27%, depending on the substrate and ultrasonic amplitude used....

Raw data of figures for paper "An Experimental Study of Ultrasonic Vibration and the Penetration of Granular Material"

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th Annual Conference on Towards Autonomous Robotics, TAROS 2017, held in Guildford, UK, in July 2017. The 43 revised full papers presented together with 13 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 66 submissions. The papers discuss robotics research drawn from a wide and diverse...

The dual-reciprocating drill (DRD) is a biologically-inspired low-mass alternative to traditional drilling techniques, using backwards-facing teethed halves to grip the surrounding substrate, generating a traction force that reduces the required overhead penetration force. Previous experiments using a proof-of-concept test bench have provided evide...

In recent decades, terrain modelling and reconstruction techniques have increased research interest in precise short and long distance autonomous navigation, localisation and mapping within field robotics. One of the most challenging applications is in relation to autonomous planetary exploration using mobile robots. Rovers deployed to explore extr...

This paper proposes a novel object detection method based on the visual saliency model in order to reliably detect objects such as rocks from single monocular planetary images. The algorithm takes advantage of the relatively homogeneous and distinct albedos present in planetary environments such as Mars or the Moon to extract a Digital Terrain Mode...

The ground verification of a spacecraft control algorithm is commonly done via air bearing facility. Air bearing testbeds are frequently developed for testing a three-axis stabilized spacecraft control algorithm but hardly for a spin-stabilized spacecraft. A modular testbed for testing a spinning spacecraft has been developed at Surrey Space Centre...

The Powdered Sample Dosing and Distribution System (PSDDS) of the ExoMars rover will be required to handle and contain samples of Mars regolith for long periods of time. Cementation of the regolith, caused by water and salts in the soil, results in clumpy material and a duricrust layer forming on the surface. It is therefore possible that material...

This chapter focuses on the planetary surface navigation has been the exclusive domain of wheeled rover. It discusses the different constraints imposed on a navigation system, in particular, the effects of communication delays, the environment (radiation, thermal, lighting, dust, gravity, magnetic field), the appearance of the sky, and the existenc...

The use of robotic systems for planetary exploration has been successfully shown in recent years with outstanding examples such as the Mars rovers Opportunity, Spirit, and Curiosity. This chapter reviews current and existing robotic manipulation systems for planetary exploration. It discusses relevant design requirements, specifications, and proced...

Building on a comprehensive review of existing and future planetary robotic missions, this chapter uses the system engineering design philosophy and discusses the mission-driven design considerations, the system-level design drivers as well as the subsystem design trade-offs for a robotic system, whether the mission is set to explore the lunar crat...

This chapter addresses components, sensors, software, and visual cues that are important to fulfill the needs of robotic activities on the surface of planets, asteroids, comets and moons. The main users of robotic vision solutions are planetary rovers, landers and astronauts. The chapter shows that various passive vision sensor technologies have be...

Chapter 6 offers a systematic, thorough discussion on mission operations and autonomy. Section 6.1 introduces the background and 6.2 sets the context of the topic by introducing the basic concepts of mission operations, processes and procedures, and typical operation modes of planetary robotic systems. Section 6.3 discusses the first step in develo...

For readers from both academia and industry wishing to pursue their studies and /or careers in planetary robotics, this book represents a one-stop tour of the history, evolution, key systems, and technologies of this emerging field. The book provides a comprehensive introduction to the key techniques and technologies that help to achieve autonomous...

Chang'E-3 (CE-3) was the third mission by China to explore the Moon which had landed two spacecraft, the CE-3 lander and Yutu rover on the lunar surface in late 2013. The paper presents analytical results of high-resolution terrain data taken by CE-3's onboard cameras. The image data processing aims to extract sinkage profiles of the wheel tracks d...

Advanced automation requires complex robotic systems that are susceptible to mechanical, software and sensory failures. While bespoke solutions exist to avoid such situations, there is a requirement to develop generic robotic framework that can allow autonomous recovery from anomalous conditions through hardware or software reconfiguration. This pa...

We report on experiences in the development of hybrid autonomous systems where high-level decisions are made by a rational agent. This rational agent interacts with other sub-systems via an abstraction engine. We describe three systems we have developed using the EASS BDI agent programming language and framework which supports this architecture. As...

ISSN 2398-4414

Certain limitations exist in autonomous software and guidance, navigation, and control architectures developed for extraterrestrial planetary exploration rovers in regard to fault tolerance, changes in environment, and changes in rover capabilities. To address these limitations, this paper outlines a self-reconfiguring guidance, navigation, and con...

Satellites are becoming more essential for countries especially for civilian applications, but the cost of having a complete satellite is still high for many of them. In other cases, satellite owners may not be fully utilizing the satellite for their own use. On another level, a spacecraft may be used to carry more than one mission for different ag...

As icy regolith is believed to exist in the subsurface of permanently shadowed areas near the lunar south pole, there is a growing interest in obtaining samples from these polar regions. To qualify for spaceflight, sampling instruments must demonstrate their ability to operate in the expected environment. However, there is currently no quantitative...

This paper proposes a generic approach towards combining fuzzy logic and ontology-based deliberative reasoning to enable self-reconfigurability within a distributed system architecture. An Ontology-based rational agent uses outputs from a fuzzy inference system (reconfiguration layer) which passively monitors the performance of the lower-level sub-...

Three degree of freedom (3-DOF) ACS satellite testbed systems are essential hardware-in-the-loop testing facilities for the construction of a wide range of intelligent AOCS algorithms. Intrepid is a 3-DOF spherical air-bearing satellite testbed custom designed at the Surrey Space Centre, UK, and installed on-site at Airbus Defence and Space in Frie...

The work undertaken in the paper investigates the power-saving capability of using direct ultrasonic vibration to facilitate sub-surface penetration through granular material. The results show that total power consumption of penetration can be reduced by 28%, with the greatest improvements occurring in higher density sands.

Redundant and nonoperational buildings at nuclear sites go through the process of 'decommissioning', involving decontamination of nuclear waste material and demolition of physical infrastructure. One challenging problem currently faced by the nuclear industry during this process is the segregation of redundant waste material into a choice of 'post-...

Planetary monocular simultaneous localization and mapping (PM-SLAM), a modular, monocular SLAM system for use in planetary exploration, is presented. The approach incorporates a biologically inspired visual saliency model (i.e., semantic feature detection) for visual perception in order to improve robustness in the challenging operating environment...

Identifying wheel sinkage for planetary exploration rovers can give a critical insight about the terrain traversability and in particular the characteristics of deformable soils that the rover travels on. This paper presents a monocular vision based approach that can detect and estimate the sinkage of a hybrid legged wheel in real time and robustly...

The Canadian American British Lunar Explorer (CABLE) is a low-cost lunar lander/microRover mission concept based on international collaboration of niche technologies. CABLE includes collaborations with the University of Surrey/Surrey Space Centre on the soft lander, planetary surface autonomy and communications technologies and the University of Ha...

The dual-reciprocating drill (DRD) is a biologically-inspired concept which has shown promise in planetary environments, requiring a lower overhead force than traditional rotary drilling techniques. By using two reciprocating backwards-facing teethed halves to grip the surrounding substrate, it generates a traction force that reduces the required o...

One of the most important lessons learnt from more than ten years of robotic exploration in Mars is the high value of autonomy in terms of operations and science return. So far, only few full-scale experiments to foster autonomy for planetary exploration have been conducted in Europe, being the recently finished FASTER FP7 framework project one of...

As future planetary missions evolve from local exploration in the vicinity of the lander (up to a few km) to more regional operations (with a reach beyond tens of km), the need for a safe and efficient traverse will be greater than ever. To address these challenges, the EU FP7 FASTER project [1] has tackled for the past 4 years the Forward Acquisit...