Two Autonomous Robots for the DLR SpaceBot Cup - Lessons Learned from 60 Minutes on the Moon

Abstract

The SpaceBot Cup 2015 was a national robotics contest among 10 German universities and research institutes. It was organized by the German Aerospace Agency DLR and required 60 minutes of autonomous operation in a challenging environment. The robots had to explore and map the environment, find, transport and manipulate two objects, and navigate back to the landing site without global position information like GPS under very restricted communication. This paper describes our concept, the used systems and algorithms, and our experiences in terms of lessons learned.