Date of Award
Spring 6-13-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering
Organizational Unit
Daniel Felix Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering
First Advisor
Kimon P. Valavanis
Second Advisor
Matthew J. Rutherford
Third Advisor
Patrizia Liveri
Fourth Advisor
Alvaro Arias
Fifth Advisor
Rui Fan
Sixth Advisor
Michael J. Keables
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
All Rights Reserved.
Keywords
Hexacopters, Autonomous navigation, Autonomy, Control, Mars, Reinforcement learning, Space exploration
Abstract
Mars exploration has recently witnessed major interest within the scientific community. Unmanned robotic platforms offer reliable solutions to acquire and collect data and information from the Red Planet. Particularly, rovers, landers, and orbiters have significantly shaped planetary exploration on the Moon and Mars, contributing significantly to past missions while also highlighting limitations in their capacity to cover diverse terrains over wide ranges. Given current advances in Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) offer promising alternatives for future scientific missions.
It is argued that hexacopters, with their relatively compact design and redundancy, present a promising solution for autonomous exploration tasks on Mars, overcoming at the same time the limitations of wheel-based rovers and increasing orbiters’ data resolution. However, the specific harsh conditions of the Martian environment result in a restricted flight envelope when flying close to the surface and then landing. To this end, autonomous navigation strategies along with robust controllers are needed for complex exploration tasks.
This research focuses on designing a Mars Hexacopter (MHex) for a scouting mission in the Martian Jezero region. The hexacopter configuration and architecture considers, as a initial baseline, the NASA conceptual study of the Mars Science Helicopter (MSH). Then, the mission profile for mapping the Belva crater is examined, followed by a detailed approach to implement and test autonomous observer-based navigation and control strategies. A comprehensive simulated environment is also presented based on integrating ROS and Ardupilot, which is used to validate the overall system architecture and the mission parameters considering both the morphological shape of the explored crater and the atmospheric conditions of Mars.
Copyright Date
6-2025
Publication Statement
Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.
Rights Holder
Laura Sopegno
Provenance
Received from ProQuest
File Format
application/pdf
Language
English (eng)
Extent
115 pgs
File Size
8.7 MB
Recommended Citation
Sopegno, Laura, "An Advanced Hexacopter for Autonomous Exploration of Mars: Attitude Control and Navigation Strategies" (2025). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2602.
https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/2602