PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Autonomy is an essential factor to maximize the scientific return of exploratory missions, and it in- creasingly motivates the development of intelligent technologies that reduce the need for remote con- trol or human supervision. is is the case for in- stance in the fields of rover navigation or on-board science analysis for planetary exploration. Inter- estingly, some of the tasks involved in such en- deavors are also faced and efficiently solved by bio- logical systems in nature, e.g. the animal olfactory system is able to autonomously detect and track cues (molecules) over long distances; it can robustly cope with sparse or noisy data, and it requires low computational complexity and energy consump- tion. On account of such capabilities, technolo- gies that find inspiration in the neural architecture of biological systems present intrinsic advantages that give answers to the requirements of space en- vironments. is paper outlines recent work in the fields of bio-inspired autonomous navigation and neuromorphic chemical sensing. We envision that these two approaches can be merged to pro- duce novel techniques for autonomous exploration in space applications.