Our lab has been awarded new two-year long NASA project that focuses on using simulation to design autonomy stacks for lunar operations of rovers. The goal of the project is to produce a simulation environment in which one can simulate the dynamics of the rover, the sensors used on the rover, and the deformation of the terrain the rover operates on. If everything goes as planned, this simulator will be used to test control policies that would enable the rover to avoid getting stuck in sand, or allow it to engage in autonomous construction operations. On the project, our lab will team up with Protoinnovations LLC, a spin-off of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute. The credit goes back to the folks in the lab, who do the heavy lifting – getting projects like this would not be possible without their passion and hard work.