Sensing, perception, and the ability to locate itself in its surroundings are key elements of autonomous vehicles and a core element of our group’s research. We are interested in studying vehicles that operate independently from external support, and our work starts with autonomous onboard navigation.
Many space vehicles are tracked from the ground where a navigation solution is formed and used to compute maneuvers offline that are then commanded from the ground and executed by the spacecraft. Other vehicles rely on the ground or GPS for their navigation but are able to compute their translational maneuvers onboard.
We are interested in all aspects of autonomous Guidance, Navigation, and Control, with particular emphasis on GPS-denied onboard navigation that is independent of ground support. Our research in this area includes autonomous spacecraft rendezvous and the utilization of optical navigation techniques (vision-based and LIDARs). Current and past projects include the NASA Orion’s navigation system and the Orbital Cygnus’ relative navigation system.
Publications in this research area:
- S.P. Arjun Ram, Maruthi R. Akella, and Renato Zanetti. Angular velocity estimation using rate-integrating gyro measurements. Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, March 2023. doi:10.2514/1.G007344
- Rahul Moghe, Renato Zanetti, and Maruthi Akella. Adaptive Kalman Filter for Detectable Linear Time Invariant Systems. Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, 42(10):2197–2205, October 2019. doi: 10.2514/1.G004359
- Christopher D’Souza and Renato Zanetti. Information Formulation of the UDU Kalman Filter. IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, early access. doi: 10.1109/TAES.2018.2850379.
- Renato Zanetti, Greg N. Holt, Robert S. Gay, Chris D’Souza, Jastesh Sud, Harvey Mamich, and Robert Gillis. Design and Flight Performance of the Orion Pre-Launch Navigation System. Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, 40(9):2289–2300, Sept. 2017. doi: 10.2514/1.G002666.
- Renato Zanetti, Greg N. Holt, Robert S. Gay, Chris D’Souza, Jastesh Sud, Harvey Mamich, Micheal Bagley, Ellis King, and Fred Clark. Orion Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT1) Absolute Navigation Performance. Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, 40(5):1106-1116 May 2017. doi: 10.2514/1.G002371.
- Renato Zanetti and Christopher D’Souza. Dual Accelerometer Usage Strategy for Onboard Spacecraft Navigation. Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, 35(6):1899–1901, November–December 2012. doi: 10.2514/1.58154.
- Renato Zanetti. Autonomous Midcourse Navigation for Lunar Return. Journal of Spacecrafts and Rockets, 46(4):865–873, July–August 2009. doi: 10.2514/1.41769.