Icy Moon

Research on icy moons focuses on developing the technological capabilities needed to explore their subsurface oceans, a key area for potential extraterrestrial life. Current efforts concentrate on improving autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) navigation and control, particularly for challenging tasks like vertical docking, and on creating realistic simulations of icy moon surfaces to test robotic sampling systems. These simulations utilize stereo vision and both traditional and deep learning-based algorithms for depth estimation, addressing the lack of high-resolution imagery from these celestial bodies. Advances in these areas are crucial for future missions aiming to gather data and potentially discover evidence of life beyond Earth.