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About

Felix Ruess is a leading researcher in autonomous robotics, with a focus on enabling aerial and ground vehicles to operate independently in challenging, unstructured environments. His work spans urban search and rescue, planetary exploration, and robotic manipulation, where he has pioneered vision-based navigation and state estimation systems. Ruess is best known for his 2012 paper "Toward a Fully Autonomous UAV," which has garnered over 800 citations and introduced a research platform for indoor and outdoor search and rescue missions. This work, along with his stereo vision-based navigation system for flying robots (156 citations), has been instrumental in advancing small aerial systems that require no external infrastructure. His contributions extend to space robotics, where he led the development of the Light Weight Rover Unit (LRU) for autonomous planetary exploration, achieving notable success in the SpaceBotCamp challenge. Ruess has also addressed critical challenges in state estimation for highly dynamic systems, developing key frame odometry techniques that handle varying time delays. With a career focused on practical, deployable solutions, his research continues to shape the future of autonomous navigation in both terrestrial and extraterrestrial domains.