We are on the AMADEE-24 mission to Mars

The Institute for Systems and Robotics and the Interactive Technologies Institute are participating in the upcoming AMADEE-24 mission to Mars. The Austrian Space Forum (OeWF) is the mission organiser. It aims to advance the development of space exploration through international collaboration and scientific research.

Previous experience on Mars

As one of the scientific partners of the OeWF, LARSyS has contributed to the analogue missions to Mars since 2019. The upcoming mission will take place in 2024. It will simulate the living conditions on Mars, with six analogue astronauts living in isolation for a month in Armenia. During this time, the LARSyS team will conduct an experiment called MEROP (Towards a More Effective Remote Operation of Planetary ground robots using multimodal interfaces). MEROP aims to improve the teleoperation of remote rovers and provide astronauts with a toolkit for troubleshooting.

“We are excited to be part of this major international collaborative effort for the development of space exploration,” said researcher Rute Luz. “Our experiment will use a teleoperation interface with several levels of autonomy. We will use image argumentation to improve teleoperation and compensate for operational challenges like situation awareness or rough terrains.”

Researchers have already conducted experiments to evaluate the proposed interfaces in a realistic virtual environment where frequent traction losses occur. In fact, the results suggest that adding human cognitive skills to planetary exploration through remote teleoperation can lead to more valuable scientific data acquisition.

The AMADEE-24 mission science definition workshop was held in February. Then, the official location and crew for the mission were announced.