Insect-Based Autonomy Planned for Space Rover

The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to test Opteran Mind, an autonomy-software platform based on the insect brain, on Airbus space rovers in an effort to improve their ability to navigate hostile, off-world environments.

U.K.-based Opteran, which is named after Hymenoptera, an order of insects that includes bees and ants, has reverse-engineered natural insect-brain algorithms into a software “mind” that enables robots to move through challenging environments without the need for extensive data or training, making navigational decisions in milliseconds instead of minutes. 

Rovers currently must compute a map of their surroundings using multiple cameras before each movement, a slow process that saps energy reserves. Successful integration of Opteran Mind would extend the rover’s exploratory capabilities, providing it with continuous navigation while driving farther and faster and using much less power to compute. 

“We are delighted to be working with ESA and Airbus to demonstrate how Opteran’s neuromorphic software addresses key blockers in space autonomy,” said Opteran CEO and co-founder David Rajan. “Our long-term vision is to provide natural autonomy with the Opteran Mind to every machine on Earth and beyond, and this project will show how we can enable high-speed, continuous safe driving, optimized for the rigors of planetary rover navigation.” 

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Opteran plans to conduct the tests with Airbus at its Mars Yard in Stevenage in the U.K. The project is funded via a U.K. Space Agency program, which takes nascent technologies not ready to be sent into space and develops them for future missions. 

The near-term focus of the tests will be depth estimation for obstacle detection, while the mid-term focus will be on infrastructure-free visual navigation. After the test results are presented to the space agency, the objective would be to secure grant funding for the next stage of development, which would look toward deployment and commercialization.

“Today, no such flight-ready systems exist, so there is a major opportunity for Opteran to step up and resolve a challenge facing all the major players in space robotics,” Rajan said.

Earth-Bound Operations

The Opteran Mind has already been deployed commercially. In March, the company announced a partnership with German warehouse-robot manufacturer Safelog to integrate Opteron Mind with its fleet of autonomous mobile robots. The objective is to develop a next-generation robot capable of operating in complicated, dynamic warehouse environments with ever-changing obstacles and travel paths.

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“There are a lot of challenges for existing autonomy solutions to overcome in the complex conditions of a warehouse, so we have been amazed by what Opteran Mind can achieve,” Safelog managing director Michael Reicheicher said at the time. “Opteran’s technology performs significantly better in our mobile robots, which will be hugely beneficial for our customers.”