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About

Levin Gerdes is a leading figure in planetary robotics, whose work is shaping how humanity will explore the Moon and Mars. His research centers on three critical areas: teleoperation from orbit, autonomous terrain mapping, and the development of planetary rover testbeds. Gerdes’s most impactful contribution is his work on force-feedback telemanipulation, demonstrating how astronauts on the International Space Station can remotely control robots on a planetary surface to perform complex geology tasks—a concept validated in the landmark ANALOG-1 experiment (16 citations). To overcome the challenges of unknown terrain, he pioneered a self-supervised learning method that reconstructs occluded elevation data in digital elevation maps (24 citations), enabling safer autonomous navigation. His hands-on engineering is evident in the design and testing of ESA’s planetary rover testbeds (17 citations), which serve as critical validation platforms. With over 110 total citations and a recent dataset release (BASEPROD, 2024), Gerdes is not only advancing the state of the art but also providing the open-source tools and experimental frameworks that will enable the next generation of robotic explorers.