International Cooperation: One Step Closer to the Moon
Together with the FZI, ETH Zurich and three Swiss universities, ESA takes an optimized robot team one step closer to the moon mission.
Research Focus: Applied Artificial Intelligence
The prospect of a robotic mission to the moon is the inspiration and impetus that drives the FZI Research Center for Information Technology in Karlsruhe and its project partners in the ARISE consortium. The international cooperation of research teams from Germany and Switzerland makes this prospect tangible. As the winning team of the ESA-ESRIC Space Resources Challenge, the partners further developed their results from 2023 with a total funding of 500,000 euros from the European space agencies ESA and ESRIC over the past ten months – and have now tested them in a three-day field trial with robots in Switzerland.
Karlsruhe, February 26, 2025 – The European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Space Resources Innovation Center (ESRIC) launched the ESA-ESRIC Space Resources Challenge to find innovative approaches to exploring the lunar surface with robots and extracting valuable resources.
A so-called “tech-maturation” phase followed the competition. The winning consortium ARISE was able to develop the winning results of the challenge further, supported by a total funding of 500,000 euros from ESA and ESRIC. A unique incentive: the prospect of participating in a real robotic mission to the moon.
The final milestone of the “tech-maturation” phase from October 2023 to spring 2025 was a test mission under realistic conditions from February 12 to 14. The consortium partners tested their developments for the lunar mission in a suitable test environment, a quarry near Zurich, temporarily joined by ESA representative Igor Drozdovsky. At the same time, the test mission took the team to the next level in an interdisciplinary and international approach.
FZI department head and mission leader Tristan Schnell welcomed the special opportunity to work with researchers from different disciplines and countries: “The fact that we were able to cooperatively bring together and jointly test the FZI solutions for the deployment of robot teams with the approaches of robotics researchers from a top international institution such as ETH Zurich has given us a great boost. This has allowed us to significantly increase the maturity level of our autonomy and gain new perspectives for the future.”
Investigation in the moon scenario: more sensitive, realistic and cooperative
Dusty surfaces, extreme temperature differences, a thin atmosphere, recurring communication problems with mission control on earth, some 384,000 kilometers away, and unexpected spikes – these were the simulated lunar conditions under which five robots started their three specific tasks in the quarry. The team line-up: Two four-legged walking robots from ETH Zurich worked together with two walking robots and a moving robot with an instrumented arm from the FZI.
The roboticists tested how well their robots explored a previously unknown landscape in the quarry. Depending on the task, the robots could work together autonomously with varying degrees of decision-making freedom. In parallel and cooperation, they examined, mapped, and photographed the terrain, searching for titanium.
The interdisciplinary teams at the mission control stations used data and images to decide which rock interior the four-wheeled robot should investigate in more detail by milling. The robot team had to cope with communication gaps ranging from around five seconds to total disconnections and switch between two different base stations – one for roboticists and one for geologists.
Compared to the last field test in the competition final, the new challenge for the five robots was the changed scenario in an outdoor environment. The latter aimed to refine the robots’ abilities and cooperation skills: for instance, small areas of ground had to be identified and precisely analyzed. The skills of the ANYmal and Spot walking robots from the FZI and ETH had been further developed during the preparation period so that they could overcome steep and impassable terrain and use their legs or a gripper to turn over geologically relevant stones in order to examine the underside as well.
ETH team leader Hendrik Kolvenbach says: “Testing our walking robots in the field with current control strategies based on neural networks and upgrading them with a high degree of autonomy has brought us one step closer to future space missions.”
The FZI's strengths in the project: investigating robotic autonomy and teamwork
The FZI robotics team contributed its strengths in software solutions and detailed task implementations to the collaboration. The focus was on the software concept of scalable autonomy, which is essential for space research.
The unique expertise of the FZI contributed to optimizing the deployment of the five-member robot team – for example, when taking samples. The robot team was able to act optimally in interaction with the human team thanks to the gradable autonomy of each robot, depending on their skills and the task at hand. The test in the quarry was a success: the FZI solution approaches demonstrated their capabilities in the almost perfectly simulated lunar environment and made a decisive contribution to autonomous, cooperative geological exploration and analysis in the field.
Results of the mission at the FZI Open House
At the FZI Open House on February 27, 2025, the results from the quarry trial were demonstrated.
About the ARISE consortium
The consortium developed out of the ESA-ESRIC Space Resources Challenge and consists of robotics, geology, and space experts from the FZI Research Center for Information Technology, the ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich, the University of Basel, and the University of Bern.
About the FZI
The FZI Research Center for Information Technology, with headquarters in Karlsruhe and a branch office in Berlin, is a non-profit institution for information technology application research and technology transfer. It delivers the latest scientific findings in information technology to companies and public institutions and qualifies individuals for academic and business careers or the leap into self-employment. Supervised by professors from various faculties, the research groups at the FZI develop interdisciplinary concepts, software, hardware, and system solutions for their clients and implement the solutions found as prototypes. The FZI House of Living Labs provides a unique research environment for application research. The FZI is an innovation partner of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and strategic partner of the German Informatics Society (GI).
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