Florian Steidle

About

Florian Steidle is a robotics researcher whose work spans planetary exploration, autonomous systems, and surgical robotics, with particular expertise in developing robotic technologies for extreme and challenging environments. Based at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Steidle has made significant contributions to space analog missions, including the landmark ARCHES project (98 citations), which demonstrated how heterogeneous teams of autonomous robots can collaboratively perform scientific sampling in planetary analog environments — a paradigm shift from traditional single-robot missions. His work on the MADMAX dataset (54 citations) has provided the planetary robotics community with critical resources for developing and benchmarking visual-inertial navigation systems under Mars-representative conditions. Steidle has also contributed to aerial robotics through the ARDEA micro air vehicle platform and helped validate lunar mission concepts through the ROBEX analog campaign on Mount Etna. Notably, his expertise extends beyond space applications into medical robotics, including SLAM-based surgical navigation for ureteroscopy and DLR's MiroSurge surgical demonstrator. Collectively, his body of work reflects a versatile research profile united by a focus on autonomous perception, navigation, and manipulation in demanding real-world settings.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   The ARCHES Space-Analogue Demonstration Mission: Towards Heterogeneous Teams of Autonomous Robots for Collaborative Scientific Sampling in Planetary Exploration

   98 citations · 2020
2. 2
   The MADMAX data set for visual‐inertial rover navigation on Mars

   54 citations · 2021
3. 3
   ARDEA—An MAV with skills for future planetary missions

   28 citations · 2020
4. 4
   German Aerospace Center's advanced robotic technology for future lunar scientific missions

   26 citations · 2020
5. 5
   First Results of the ROBEX Analogue Mission Campaign: Robotic Deployment of Seismic Networks for Future Lunar Missions

   25 citations · 2017
6. 6
   Fusing Visual Appearance and Geometry for Multi-Modality 6DoF Object Tracking

   18 citations · 2023
7. 7
   Visual-inertial SLAM aided estimation of anchor poses and sensor error model parameters of UWB radio modules

   15 citations · 2019
8. 8
   Datasets of Long Range Navigation Experiments in a Moon Analogue Environment on Mount Etna

   15 citations · 2018
9. 9
   An ORB-SLAM3-based Approach for Surgical Navigation in Ureteroscopy

   13 citations · 2022
10. 10
    THE DLR <i>MIROSURGE</i> SURGICAL ROBOTIC DEMONSTRATOR

    10 citations · 2018

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links