ABSTRACT: 66 flights and counting! The first planetary rotorcraft Ingenuity has been soaring into the Martian skies for a year and a half. In this talk, we will cover Ingenuity’s exciting journey from mission design to flying on Mars. We will also dive a bit more into the details of the vision-based navigation system. Finally, we will discuss the exciting on-going research work for future Mars helicopters!

BIO: Jeff Delaune is a Robotics Technologist in the Aerial Mobility Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. His interests include analysis, design, implementation, and testing of new technology for planetary exploration, with a particular focus on autonomous aerial systems and vision-based navigation so far. Jeff is part of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, Mars Sample Return Helicopters and CADRE lunar rover NASA missions. He received his Ph.D. in Robotics from Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace (ISAE, France) in 2013, after a M.S. in Astronautics and Space Engineering from Cranfield University (United Kingdom), and a B.S./M.S. in Engineering from École Centrale de Nantes (France).