The 2nd Space Robotics Workshop (SRW) took place alongside the IEEE SMC-IT/SCC on July 28-29, 2025, at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, CA. The workshop brought together experts in robotics, autonomy, AI, and aerospace to shape the next era of innovation driving our return to the Moon, the sustainable exploration of Mars and beyond, and the expansion of commercial activity beyond Earth orbit.

As national space agencies and commercial ventures capitalize on next-generation robotics, we are at a critical juncture. Increasing mission complexity, evolving space architectures, expanding commercial services, and rapid progress in AI present both unprecedented opportunities and new challenges in how we explore, operate, and build a sustainable space economy. Advances in terrestrial robotics are directly influencing the development of space robotics and are poised to play a central role in enabling more autonomous, resilient, and ambitious missions, while also laying the groundwork for future off‑world economic activities.

Building on the foundation laid during our inaugural event, this year’s workshop focused on recent breakthroughs in robotics, the current state of space robotics, the rise of the commercial space sector supporting the lunar economy, and emerging concepts aimed at enabling more capable, adaptable, and cost‑effective missions.

The program featured focused technical sessions with keynote talks, spotlight presentations, panels, and a poster session.

We are pleased to announce our confirmed speakers for the 2nd Space Robotics Workshop:

Maruthi R. Akella
University of Texas at Austin

Lindy Elkins-Tanton
UC Berkeley

Dean Bergman
Honeybee Robotics

Grace Gao
Stanford

Pascal Lee
SETI Institute / Mars Institute

Ignacio López-Francos
NASA

Rob Mueller
NASA

Dan Negrut
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Brice Howard
Sentric Solutions

Hiro Ono
NASA JPL

Lutz Richter
SoftServe

Annika Rollock
Aurelia Institute

Luis Sentis
University of Texas at Austin

Yue Wang
USC
NVIDIA

Dennis Wingo
Skycorp

Brian Yamauchi
Starpath Robotics

All sessions will be held in Room CR16

Day 1 - Monday, July 28

• Opening Remarks
  10:30 - 10:35 AM PT
  

  

  Speaker: Ignacio López-Francos (NASA)
• Unlocking the Offworld Economy with Robotic Technologies
  10:35 AM - 12:00 PM PT
  

  Speakers:

  

  Maggie Wang (Stanford) (Session Chair)

  

  Dennis Wingo (Skycorp)

  

  Grace Gao (Stanford)

  

  Rob Mueller (NASA)

  

  Brice Howard (Sentric Solutions)

  

  Brian Yamauchi (Starpath Robotics)

  The mineral resource map of our solar system is still largely blank, leaving the scientific, economic, and strategic value of lunar terrain—and of nearby asteroids—uncertain. This uncertainty is especially critical for New Space companies pursuing hi... [Expand]
• Lunch Break
  12:00 - 1:00 PM PT
• Mars Settlement Starts with Autonomy and Robotics
  1:00 - 2:30 PM PT
  

  Speakers:

  

  Luis Sentis (University of Texas at Austin / Apptronik) (Session Chair)

  

  Ignacio López-Francos (NASA)

  

  Maruthi R. Akella (University of Texas at Austin)

  

  Pascal Lee (SETI Institute / Mars Institute)

  As we extend robotic exploration to Mars and lay the groundwork for crewed missions and sustained human presence, increasing levels of autonomy become essential. Far from Earth and constrained by communication delays, robotic systems must perceive th... [Expand]
• One-Shot Interplanetary Exploration With Software-Defined Robotic Systems (Part 1)
  2:30 - 3:00 PM PT
  

  Speakers:

  

  Hiro Ono (NASA JPL) (Session Chair)

  

  Annika Rollock (Aurelia Institute)

  

  Lindy Elkins-Tanton (UC Berkeley)

  As we look beyond Mars toward the outer Solar System, the traditional model of incremental mission development becomes infeasible. This session will explore emerging concepts for adaptive, autonomous robotic systems capable of operating in unknown an... [Expand]
• Coffee Break
  3:00 - 3:30 PM PT
• One-Shot Interplanetary Exploration With Software-Defined Robotic Systems (Part 2)
  3:30 - 5:00 PM PT
  

  Speakers:

  

  Hiro Ono (NASA JPL) (Session Chair)

  

  Dean Bergman (Honeybee Robotics / Blue Origin)

  

  Feifei Qian (USC)

  As we look beyond Mars toward the outer Solar System, the traditional model of incremental mission development becomes infeasible. This session will explore emerging concepts for adaptive, autonomous robotic systems capable of operating in unknown an... [Expand]

Day 2 - Tuesday, July 29

• High-Fidelity Simulation and Digital Twins for Space Robotics
  10:30 AM - 12:00 PM PT
  

  Speakers:

  

  Lutz Richter (SoftServe) (Session Chair)

  

  Dan Negrut (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

  

  Yue Wang (USC, NVIDIA)

  High-fidelity simulation is playing an increasingly critical role in the development, testing, and validation of autonomous robotic systems for space exploration. This session will focus on the state of the art in simulation tools and digital twin fr... [Expand]
• Lunch Break
  12:00 - 1:00 PM PT
• Special Session: Earth and Beyond: The State of Robotics
  1:00 - 2:00 PM PT
  

  Speakers:

  

  Ignacio López-Francos (NASA) (Session Chair)

  

  Brice Howard (Sentric Solutions)

  

  Hiro Ono (NASA JPL)

  

  Luis Sentis (University of Texas at Austin)

  

  Yue Wang (USC, NVIDIA)

  Robotics is advancing rapidly on Earth, driven by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and increasingly capable, compact, and cost-effective hardware, including advanced sensors, actuators, and onboard computing. Translating these capabilities in... [Expand]
• Spotlight Talks (Part 1)
  2:00 - 3:00 PM PT
  

  2:00 PM – "Experimental Study of Magnetically-Actuated Satellite Swarm: Controllability Extension via Time-Integrated Control with Geometry Learning" – Yuta Takahashi

  2:15 PM – "Validation and Verification of Safety-Critical Aspects of Autonomy in Orbital Robotics" – Roberto Lampariello

  2:30 PM – "Learning Surface and Vertical Mobility for Enceladus Direct Ocean Access" – Jack Naish

  2:45 PM – "Adaptive Science Operations in Deep Space Missions Using Offline Belief State Planning" – Hailey Warner
• Coffee Break
  3:00 - 3:30 PM PT
• Spotlight Talks (Part 2)
  3:30 - 4:30 PM PT
  

  3:30 PM – "Drift-Free Visual Compass Leveraging Digital Twins for Cluttered Environments" – Jungil Ham

  3:45 PM – "A Rigid-Soft Underactuated Tendon-Driven Gripper Prototype for Free-Flying Manipulation" – Brian Coltin

  4:00 PM – "RA-SR: A 16–32-Channel Low-Power FPGA Multi-Protocol ESC Controller for Space Robotics" – Mohamed El-Hadedy

  4:15 PM – "Free-Flying Intra-Vehicular Robots: A Review" – Jordan Kam
• Best Paper Award + Closing Remarks
  4:30 - 5:00 PM PT

Day 3 - Wednesday, July 30 (Optional)

• Tours (limited capacity & pre-registration required)
  Morning - Afternoon

We are excited to make the session recordings public to the community. Click any card below to jump to a session and watch the talks.

Session 01

Session 02

Session 03

Session 04

Special Session

Opening Remarks

Ignacio López‑Francos, NASA

Short overview of the workshop and objectives.

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STARMINE: An End-to-End Robotic System for Lunar Mining and LOX Production

Brian Yamauchi, Starpath Robotics

How do we refuel on the Moon? Brian Yamauchi (Principal Autonomy Engineer, Starpath) presents STARMINE, a three-part system—Rover, Plant, Tower—designed to mine icy regolith at the lunar south pole and produce LOX for lander refueling. The autonomy stack enables repeated traverses from sunlit power to permanently shadowed craters, closing the loop from excavation to oxygen production at scale.

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Towards Autonomous Driving on the Moon

Prof. Grace X. Gao, Stanford

As a new era of lunar exploration unfolds with NASA’s Artemis mission and numerous other planned missions, autonomous operations are paramount for sustained presence and complex robotic activity. Prof. Grace X. Gao (Stanford NAVLab) highlights key research efforts, including the establishment of a “Moon-GPS” satellite network (LunaNet) and building a neural twin of the Moon surface using Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs). These contributions support NASA’s robot mobility missions such as CADRE and Endurance, and notably secured a first-place win in the NASA Lunar Autonomy Challenge.

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Blue Collar Robots and Regolith

Rob Mueller, NASA KSC

NASA senior technologist Rob Mueller (co-founder of KSC’s Swamp Works Lab and the Granular Mechanics & Regolith Operations Lab) outlines a rising class of “blue-collar robots” for heavy regolith handling, construction, and ISRU on the Moon and Mars—industrial capabilities essential to make surface operations economical and repeatable.

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Flight Computers to Support Flight Robotic Systems

Dennis Wingo, Skycorp

Legendary Dennis Wingo (Skycorp) focuses on overcoming the historical lag in making robust flight computers capable of supporting robotic systems on the Moon and in deep space. He details Skycorp’s efforts in flight-qualifying advanced computer hardware, such as the PolarFire system-on-a-chip, Jetson Nano, and future HPSC systems, which are designed for autonomous navigation and AI modeling in harsh space environments. The talk emphasizes rigorous testing, radiation protection, and conduction cooling as critical for reliable operation of these systems in lunar and deep space conditions.

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Session 01 Panel

Moderated by Maggie Wang, Panel: Brian Yamauchi, Grace Gao, Rob Mueller, Dennis Wingo, Brice Howard

The panel addressed critical challenges for an off-world economy, highlighting the lack of lunar infrastructure for navigation and communication, and significant environmental difficulties such as long shadows, regolith slip, and thermal extremes that impede autonomous driving and data collection for AI. Discussions emphasized the need for resilient robotic designs that expect and rapidly recover from failures, the development of robust, flight-qualified computing hardware for AI and autonomy, and extensive testing—underscoring a necessary shift toward private funding to accelerate these advancements for sustained lunar operations.

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Building and Placing Humanoid Robots On and Around Mars

Luis Sentis, UT Austin, Apptronik

Dr. Luis Sentis (Professor at University of Texas at Austin / Co-founder of Apptronik) discusses the rapid advancements in Earth-based humanoid robotics, driven by generative AI and foundational models, and proposes two key strategies for their Martian deployment. These include adapting off-the-shelf humanoids with astronaut suits for enhanced manipulation and designing specialized liquid-cooled actuators capable of withstanding extreme space conditions, aiming for low-maintenance, multi-purpose robotic systems for future Mars missions.

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Humans To Mars in the Age of AI

Pascal Lee, Mars Institute, SETI Institute

In this thought-provoking talk, Dr. Pascal Lee explores human–robot teaming as AI progresses from narrow capabilities to AGI integrated into androids, envisioning “Artificial Astronauts” (and eventually “Artificial Super Astronauts”) as our emissaries to help explore and settle Mars and beyond.

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From Space to Street - Autonomy Lessons from Deep-Space Human Mission

Ignacio López-Francos, NASA

Long-duration human missions to Mars face critical communication delays and blackouts, making real-time ground support impossible and requiring crews to handle unexpected anomalies independently. To address this, an “Earth-independent operations” approach is proposed, focusing on developing integrated on-board hardware and software. This strategy empowers crews to independently manage critical situations by leveraging on-board analytics, statistical and rule-based AI, and physics models to enhance situational awareness, anomaly response, and procedure execution—reducing reliance on extensive ground control.

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Autonomy for Mars Robotics Missions

Maruthi R. Akella, UT Austin

Autonomy is presented as a necessity for Mars missions, driven by communication delays that demand extensive onboard decision-making for both crewed and uncrewed operations. This is addressed through research focused on learning, perception, and execution, with a strong emphasis on establishing safety and trust guarantees for dynamic and unpredictable scenarios. A critical technical challenge highlighted is robust Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT), which necessitates a scalable architecture for the Martian environment capable of overcoming communication blackouts during critical entry, descent, and landing phases.

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Session 02 Panel

Moderator: Luis Sentis, Panel: Ignacio López-Francos, Maruthi R. Akella, Pascal Lee, Luis Sentis

A focused discussion on the crucial technical challenges for Mars missions, particularly the need for trust, safety, and certifiability in autonomous systems—alongside the long-term vision of self-repairing “artificial astronauts” and the use of digital twins.

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To Boldly Go Where No Robots Have Gone Before

Hiro Ono, NASA JPL

Historically, robotic space exploration has progressed through incrementally sophisticated missions, but this approach is now constrained by budget, flight opportunities, and cruise times for exploring challenging deep-space environments. NASA JPL’s Hiro Ono proposes a new paradigm (RSE 3.0) of single-shot missions where robots or teams of robots adapt their behavior after arrival, increasing complexity as they learn about the new environment—enabled by versatile robotic hardware and onboard intelligence.

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The Big Questions of Solar System Exploration

Lindy Elkins‑Tanton, UC Berkeley

What are the biggest scientific questions of solar system exploration, and how much do we really know about them? What will the role of robotic exploration be in finding the biggest answers? Starting with “Are we alone?”, this talk walks through some of the hottest unsolved solar system mysteries and how we can bring technology to bear in answering them.

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Autonomy for One-Shot Missions

Dean Bergman, Honeybee Robotics

Honeybee has been developing robotic systems for deep-space missions for decades. The deeper we get into the solar system and the more unforgiving terrains we explore, the greater the need for autonomy and adaptability. This presentation highlights examples of what Honeybee is considering for such one-shot missions to ensure mission success.

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Toward Adaptivity by Design: Lessons from Space Mission Operations Beyond the Plan

Hiro Ono, NASA JPL

Space exploration inherently confronts the unknown, necessitating adaptive mission operations despite meticulous planning—a need historically addressed by ground teams reactively improvising solutions to anomalies. This talk analyzes past missions to distill design principles for future “adaptivity by design,” advocating for flexible, sensor-rich hardware and autonomous onboard intelligence to enable radically adaptive, one-shot exploration of extreme environments.

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TESSERAE: Robotic Self-Assembly for In-Space Construction

Annika Rollock, Aurelia Institute

The TESSERAE (Tessellated Electromagnetic Space Structures for the Exploration of Reconfigurable, Adaptive Environments) paradigm introduces a novel approach to in-space construction through autonomous self-assembly of modular, tile-based structures, utilizing electropermanent magnets and an onboard sensing suite. Taking advantage of microgravity and launched in an unconfigured stack, TESSERAE’s early prototypes have validated principles of magnetic docking, fault diagnosis, and recovery on parabolic flights and the ISS—paving the way for next-generation habitats, space-based solar power, and other large-scale space infrastructure.

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Session 03 Panel

Moderator: Hiro Ono, Panel: Dean Bergman, Annika Rollock, Hiro Ono

Building on the session’s theme, the panel discusses the imperative of embedding adaptability directly into the design of future space systems and mission operations. Drawing from practical experiences, the conversation explores strategies for moving beyond reactive improvisation to proactively address the inherent unknowns of deep-space exploration.

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Talks coming soon.

We invite submissions on research and development at the intersection of robotics, autonomy, and space applications. Contributions should highlight innovative methods, systems, and technologies for exploration, in-space services, or science operations beyond Earth.

Relevant topics:

• Autonomous navigation and mobility for planetary and orbital environments, including terrain-relative localization, path planning, and novel locomotion systems (e.g., rovers, drones, subsurface robots).
• Manipulation in space and planetary environments, including dexterous handling, microgravity operations, and contact dynamics in ISAM or EVA contexts.
• In-space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM) and In-situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) enabled by robotic autonomy.
• AI agents for perception, decision-making, task planning, and multi-robot coordination in space environments.
• Foundation models and multimodal learning (vision-language-action) for general-purpose space robotic systems.
• Photogrammetry, Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs), 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS), and other volumetric representation techniques for environment modeling and scene understanding, particularly under challenging illumination conditions.
• Human-robot teaming strategies for crewed and uncrewed missions, including shared autonomy, intent recognition, and adaptive interfaces.
• Sim-to-real transfer, domain adaptation, and policy generalization for space-deployed systems.
• High-fidelity simulation and digital twins for development, integration, testing, and mission rehearsal.
• Long-duration autonomy and adaptive learning in unstructured, dynamic, or high-latency environments.
• Autonomous surface operations, including science-driven exploration, sample collection, and real-time decision-making under resource constraints.
• Spacecraft swarms and distributed robotic systems, including satellite formation flying, multi-agent planning, and inter-agent communication.
• Space logistics, infrastructure deployment, and robotic construction, supporting scalable off-world operations.
• System integration, testing, and field validation of space robotic platforms in analog or operational environments.
• Mission concepts, technology demonstrations, and commercial initiatives accelerating the adoption of space robotics.
• Trust, verification, and validation frameworks to ensure robust, explainable, and resilient autonomous behavior.

• Full papers can be up to 10 pages, not including references. Paper templates are available here:IEEE Templates.
• Submissions must be made through theEasyChair portal. Please select the "Space Robotics Workshop" track.
• Authors may choose between two submission options:
  • Archival Track (IEEE Proceedings): Papers will be included in the official IEEE conference proceedings (indexed in IEEE Xplore).
  • Non-Archival Track: For authors who wish to present without publication, preserving eligibility for future archival venues.
• Papers selected for IEEE publication must be presented in person to comply with IEEE's "Podium and Publish" policy.
• Authors who opt out of IEEE publication may still present at the workshop and are encouraged to contribute to discussions and community-building.
• All submissions will be peer reviewed for quality and relevance.
• At least one author of each accepted paper must register for IEEE SMC-IT/SCC with an in-person registration and attend the workshop.
• All accepted papers will be presented as posters during the workshop. A select number of top submissions will be invited for spotlight presentations, based on reviewer feedback and program needs.
• Selected papers may be invited to appear in a special issue of a journal. More details will be shared later.

Congratulations to all the authors whose work was selected! Thank you to everyone who submitted, and to our reviewers for their valuable feedback and dedication to maintaining the quality of the workshop.

The 2nd Space Robotics Workshop is a volunteer led effort by researchers and practitioners in the field of robotics, autonomy, and AI from multiple organizations. We are grateful to be supported by a Scientific Committee composed of leading experts across academia, industry, and government, who help ensure the quality, relevance, and impact of the program.

Ignacio G. López-Francos
NASA Ames

Alex Sowell
NASA JSC

Brian Coltin
NASA Ames

Kuldeep Rambhai
Redwire

Maggie Wang
Stanford University

Marcel Kaufmann
NASA JPL

Ricard Marsal I Castan
University of Luxembourg

Rob Royce
NASA JPL

Roshan Kalghatgi
NASA Ames

Alison Lowndes
NVIDIA

Andy Hock
Cerebras

Animesh Garg
Georgia Tech, NVIDIA, Apptronik

Edward Balaban
NASA ARC

Giuseppe Cataldo
NASA GSFC

Hiro Ono
NASA JPL

Jean-Pierre de la Croix
NASA JPL

Jennifer Blank
Blue Marble Space Institute of Science

Jennifer Heldmann
NASA ARC

Jonathan Knowles
Former Autodesk, Apple, Adobe

Jonathan Stock
NASA ARC

Katherine Scott
Intrinsic, Open Robotics

Keerthana Gopalakrishnan
Google DeepMind

Kentaro Uno
Tohoku University

Luis Merino
Universidad Pablo de Olavide

Luis Sentis
University of Texas at Austin, Apptronik

Pyojin Kim
Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST)

Roberto Lampariello
DLR (German Aerospace Center)

Rodrigo Ventura
Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), University of Lisbon

Trey Smith
NASA ARC

We are grateful for the support of the following organizations that contributed a small part in making the 2nd Space Robotics Workshop a success: