Hovhannes Melikyan
Papers
6
Total Citations
130
H-Index
5
About
Hovhannes Melikyan is a robotics researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, specializing in autonomous mobility for extreme environments, multi-robot coordination, and space exploration. His most impactful work centers on the EELS (Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor) snake-like robot, designed to navigate treacherous icy terrains on ocean worlds like Enceladus and Europa. Melikyan’s contributions include developing task and motion planning capabilities for EELS (62 citations), enabling autonomous mobility with resilience to sensor failures (16 citations), and pioneering a novel active skin propulsion system for vertical mobility in glacier crevasses (3 citations). His research on communication-aware multi-robot coordination (ACHORD, 37 citations) addresses the critical challenge of intermittent connectivity in subterranean and comms-restricted environments, improving both exploration efficiency and situational awareness. Melikyan also contributed to extending the NeBula autonomy solution for larger-scale environments (7 citations), a key achievement from Team CoSTAR’s participation in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge. His work represents a paradigm shift toward one-shot exploration missions with in-situ adaptation, boldly advancing the frontier of robotic space exploration.
Research Focus
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Top Papers
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