Space Robotics

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Overview

Space robotics studies machines that operate in orbit, inside spacecraft, and on planetary surfaces, where gravity, terrain, communication delays, and repair opportunities differ from those on Earth. Work includes free-flying robots and manipulators for inspection, capture, and assembly, as well as rovers and legged robots for navigation, sampling, and resource use. Common approaches combine perception and mapping with model-based planning and control, reinforcement learning, and simulation, with evaluation in spacecraft emulators, hardware testbeds, and planetary analogues. A central challenge is transferring reliable, safe autonomy from simulation to hardware while accounting for uncertain environments, limited onboard resources, and delayed communication.

Latest papers

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71 papers20 papers in the last four weeks, up 33% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Architecting Autonomy for Safe Microgravity Free-Flyer Inspection

    Mar 15, 2026Keenan Albee, David C. Sternberg, Alexander Hansson +3Space RoboticsSpacecraft Rendezvous and Proximity Operations

    Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA, USA · Department of Mechanical Engineering ETH Zürich Zürich, Switzerland · Department of Aerospace Engineering University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI, USA

  2. Dynamic Modeling and Attitude Control of a Reaction-Wheel-Based Low-Gravity Bipedal Hopper

    Mar 11, 2026Shriram Hari, M Venkata Sai Nikhil, R Prasanth KumarRobot LocomotionLegged Robotics

    Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Sangareddy, India

  3. SpaceSense-Bench: A Large-Scale Multi-Modal Benchmark for Spacecraft Perception and Pose Estimation

    Mar 10, 2026Aodi Wu, Jianhong Zuo, Zeyuan Zhao +3Robotic PerceptionSpacecraft Pose Estimation

    University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China · Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China · Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China

  4. Multi-Agent Off-World Exploration for Sparse Evidence Discovery via Gaussian Belief Mapping and Dual-Domain Coverage

    Mar 8, 2026Zhuoran Qiao, Tianxin Hu, Thien-Minh Nguyen +1Multi-Robot ExplorationInformative Path Planning

    National University of Singapore, Singapore · Nanyang Technological University, Singapore · The University of Queensland, Australia

  5. Underactuated multimodal jumping robot for extraterrestrial exploration

    Mar 6, 2026Neil R. Wagner, Justin K. YimRobot LocomotionLegged Robotics

    Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  6. A Soft Robotic Demonstration in the Stratosphere

    Mar 4, 2026Codrin Tugui, Tirth Thakar, Anatol Gogoj +5Soft RoboticsMaterials Science

    University of Connecticut, School of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Manufacturing Engineering, Storrs, Connecticut USA · Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry Petru Poni; Iași, Romania · University of Toronto, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

  7. Emerging trends in Cislunar Space for Lunar Science Exploration and Space Robotics aiding Human Spaceflight Safety

    Mar 3, 2026Arsalan Muhammad, Yue Wang, Hai Huang +1Space Robotics

    School of Astronautics, Beihang University Xueyuan Road, 102206, Beijing, China · Regional Centre for Space Science and Technology Education in Asia & the Pacific (Affiliated to the United Nations) (RCSSTEAP), Hangzhou International Innovation Institute of Beihang University, China

  8. Validation of Space Robotics in Underwater Environments via Disturbance Robustness Equivalency

    Feb 28, 2026Joris Verhagen, Elias Krantz, Chelsea Sidrane +9Space Robotics

    Division of Robotics, Perception and Learning, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. · School of Engineering Sciences, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. · Division of Decision and Control Systems, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. +1

  9. Marinarium: A Modular Experimental Facility for Reproducible Maritime and Space-Analog Field Robotics

    Feb 26, 2026Ignacio Torroba, David Dorner, Victor Nan Fernandez-Ayala +14Space RoboticsRobotics

    Division of Aerospace, Moveability and Naval Architecture, Royal Institute of Technology, 10044 Stockholm, Sweden · Department of Decision and Control Systems, Royal Institute of Technology, 10044 Stockholm, Sweden · Department of Robotics, Perception and Learning, Royal Institute of Technology, 10044 Stockholm, Sweden +1

  10. Scout-Rover cooperation: online terrain strength mapping and traversal risk estimation for planetary-analog explorations

    Feb 21, 2026Shipeng Liu, J. Diego Caporale, Yifeng Zhang +17Planetary Rover RoboticsSpace Robotics

    University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA. · University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA. · NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL, USA. +2

  11. Deep Learning Warm Starts for Trajectory Optimization on the International Space Station

    May 8, 2025Somrita Banerjee, Abhishek Cauligi, Marco PavoneTrajectory OptimizationLearning to Optimize

    Somrita Banerjee is a Machine Learning Researcher at Apple. Work completed during PhD at Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. · Abhishek Cauligi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA. · Marco Pavone is an Associate Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.