Lorenzo Miarelli
Home: University of Klagenfurt
Host: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
Topic: Robust State Estimation for Mars Science Helicopter Autonomous Flight
Lorenzo Miarelli, a master’s student in Autonomous Systems and Robotics at the University of Klagenfurt, is currently conducting research at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. His work addresses a critical challenge for future Mars exploration: achieving reliable, fully autonomous flight in visually degraded and uncharted environments.
To address this challenge, Lorenzo is focusing on improving on-board pose estimation systems for the next-generation Mars Science Helicopter (MSH), the larger successor to the Ingenuity rotorcraft. Specifically, he is evaluating the performance of a novel "Equivariant Filter" design against standard Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) algorithms. By leveraging these advanced mathematical frameworks, Lorenzo seeks to mitigate disturbances arising from noisy sensor data or environmental uncertainties.
Ultimately, his research contributes to the development of new technological capabilities required for NASA’s upcoming planetary exploration missions.
Lorenzo Miarelli