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Transform the Trajectory of a Student’s Life: Support ARCS’ Internship Program



California State University, Northridge

Research Project

Collaborative Moonwalker

(Metaverse for Moon Exploration)

Research Team

Lead Researchers:

  • Dr. Bingbing Li, Manufacturing Systems Engineering

  • Dr. Thomas Chan, Psychology

Collaborators:

  • Dr. Thomas Lu, NASA JPL
  • Dr. Edward Chow, NASA JPL

Student Team:

  • Martin Ha, BS, Computer Science
  • Elijah Sagaran, BS, Computer Science
  • Rowel Espejo, BS, Computer Science

Alumni Team:

  • Jared Carrillo
  • Elliott Sadler
  • Neville Elieh Janvisloo
  • Subhobrata Chakraborty
  • Rayyan Mridha
  • Luke Cortez
  • Leon Gold

Funding

  • Funding Organization:
  • Funding Program:

SYNOPSIS

  • Virtual Test Environment: A high-fidelity simulation is used to test rover behavior and performance
  • Autonomous, Cooperative Exploration: Moonwalker rovers are designed for goal-directed lunar exploration with minimal human input
  • Collaboration: Cross-platform and organization collaboration
"Training with Synthetic Data" diagram
Research Questions and Research Objectives

  • Test in Virtual Simulations: Use advanced simulation environments to evaluate and improve rover performance in realistic lunar conditions

  • Enhance Safety and Efficiency: Implement motivation-driven behavior in rovers to optimize mission success while maintaining safety

  • Encourage Collaboration: Lower barrier for lunar collaboration and simulation

Research Methods

  • Physics Sim: Omniverse Isaac Sim, Unity 3D, Chronos Project

  • Identify Lunar Actions: V-JEPA and synthetic training data from Unity 3D

  • 3D Models: Generated from lunar LRO data or created within 3DS Max

Research Results and Deliverables

  • Collaborative Server: Cross-platform connection succeeded with latency of below 40 ms

  • V-JEPA Actions: Trained model to understand lunar actions (walking, fixing, carrying, etc.) within 85% accuracy

Commercialization Opportunities
  • Application: Cross-platform and organization collaboration
  • Key Values: Open source, scientific progress and collaboration
  • Potential Customers: Space industry, automotive industry, scientists
Research Timeline

Start Date:
End Date:

Research Team

Lead Researchers:

  • Dr. Bingbing Li, Manufacturing Systems Engineering

  • Dr. Thomas Chan, Psychology

Collaborators:

  • Dr. Thomas Lu, NASA JPL
  • Dr. Edward Chow, NASA JPL

Student Team:

  • Martin Ha, BS, Computer Science
  • Elijah Sagaran, BS, Computer Science
  • Rowel Espejo, BS, Computer Science

Alumni Team:

  • Jared Carrillo
  • Elliott Sadler
  • Neville Elieh Janvisloo
  • Subhobrata Chakraborty
  • Rayyan Mridha
  • Luke Cortez
  • Leon Gold

Funding

  • Funding Organization:
  • Funding Program: