RoSE Lab

RoSE Lab’s Prinicpal Investigator is Dr. Frances Zhu and was started in January 2020. Dr. Zhu’s research revolves around exploring faraway, scientifically-rich environments, like the surface of Europa and Titan or the rings of Saturn, by applying Dr. Zhu’s dynamics and control knowledge and integrating machine learning models for better autonomy and adaptability. Dr. Zhu hope to develop these intelligent robots to autonomously navigate and probe scientific hotbeds in extreme terrains intermediately on Earth, like glaciers, hydrothermal vents, and underwater volcanoes, which offer analogues to space environments and independently have scientific value. Typically, scientists intuit the value of science and expeditioners intuit the danger of traversing extreme paths. An autonomous robotic scientist would instead digitize gathered measurements to scientific significance with proposed machine learning methods like Gaussian processes. A digital expeditioner would plan waypoints along a path, learn about an environment-vehicle dynamics model, and implementing low-level controllers on the vehicle to follow this path. A large gap in machine learning right now is the guarantee of safety for which I can derive for dynamic systems. The ultimate goal of Dr. Zhu’s research is to create algorithms that completely automate the planetary surface exploration process, digitizing the astronaut who would otherwise be in an immensely dangerous position. A future goal is to augment human exploration through cooperation and interaction with these intelligent robotic explorers. For more information on Dr. Zhu and her work please follow this link.