Every year, DLR awards the Science Prize to recognize outstanding scientific and technical achievements, especially by younger employees. Up to two individual prizes of up to 10,000 euros each are awarded; the individual prizes can be split between several winners. In 2021, the DLR Science Prize was awarded to an individual prizewinner, Dr. Zhang, and to a group of prizewinners, Dr. Ansari, Dr. de Zan and Mr. Parizzi.
Self-Aware Swarm Navigation in Autonomous Exploration Missions
In nature, swarming is a collective behavior exhibited by large numbers of animal life forms to achieve situational awareness and adaptation beyond the capabilities of any individual. A swarm of autonomous robots - analogous to a swarm in nature - can quickly explore a vast extraterrestrial territory. Compared to the single-rover systems used in today's space exploration missions, a swarm can perform simultaneous observations at different locations and avoid a single point of failure. A swarm is therefore a promising concept and represents a paradigm shift in future space missions.
Siwei Zhang from the Institute of Communication and Navigation received the DLR Science Award 2021 for his work on the fundamentals of navigating such a robot swarm. In his work, he investigated the fundamentals of the navigation problem of such a robot swarm. One finding of the study is that a swarm can autonomously adapt its formation to overcome navigation challenges in a collaborative way - just like ants that build "living" bridges on their food trails to overcome gaps.
Award winner: Dr. Siwei Zhang
Self-Aware Swarm Navigation in Autonomous Exploration Missions - DLR-Wissenschaftspreis 2021 für Dr. Siwei Zhang
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Self-Aware Swarm Navigation in Autonomous Exploration Missions - DLR-Wissenschaftspreis 2021 für Dr. Siwei Zhang
