ATHENE: Autonomous Terrain Handling and Environmental Navigation Experiment – an interdisciplinary education project on mobile robotics for space exploration at the University of Stuttgart
- Paper ID
102977
- DOI
- author
- company
Institute of Space Systems, University of Stuttgart; KSat e.V.
- country
Germany
- year
2025
- abstract
In August 2024 the Institute of Space Systems (IRS) at the University of Stuttgart initiated a new interdisciplinary education and outreach project in the context of mobile robotic technologies for planetary surface exploration. The project was funded by the Innovation Campus Future Mobility (ICM) within the call for innovative education projects and mobile research labs. Aim of the education program is to support and promote students and young researchers in STEM disciplines and related studies in order to elaborate both, excellent and innovative teaching and learning methods, as well as to foster interdisciplinary research-based project work on state-of-the-art science and research topics. To increase the outreach of this education project, the project work was cooperatively coordinated and conducted together with IRS and the student association Small Satellite Association (KSat) of the University of Stuttgart. By the use of these synergies, interested students could either participate through the Aerospace Engineering studies program at the University of Stuttgart or by being an active member of KSat, thus forming heterogenous teams of students for realisation of the project, fostering interdisciplinarity and information exchange between students of different courses and semester levels. The first phase of the ATHENE project focussed on two technological key capabilities of robotic systems for planetary surface exploration: mobility and perception. Within the project work, participating students worked in two workshops on developing a technology demonstrator rover-system, inheriting respective key capabilities for a demonstration mission. For development of the robotic demonstrator, students take over subsystem lead roles in each work package and coordinate fulfilment of requirements, definition of interfaces, software and hardware development and fulfilling financial budgets. In the second phase of the project, developed technologies are combined to operate the rover demonstrator in open field missions, on public outreach events or robotic student challenges. For realisation of the project, workshops and labs from both facilities IRS and KSat are used. Methodologically, multiple teaching and learning methods were applied to fit the interdisciplinary format of this education project. In order to reflect on individual learning experiences and the learning outcome, feedback milestones were concepted and are evaluated periodically. This paper presents the detailed structure of the education project, the realised teaching and learning formats and the technological developments by the student teams. It shall reflect on the positive learning outcome of interdisciplinary project work especially in STEM related studies and the importance of innovative teaching methods for modern education systems.