An Addendum to NeBula: Towards Extending TEAM CoSTAR's Solution to Larger Scale Environments
This paper presents an appendix to the original NeBula autonomy solution developed by the TEAM CoSTAR (Collaborative SubTerranean Autonomous Robots), participating in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge. Specifically, this paper presents extensions to NeBula's hardware, software, and algorithmic components that focus on increasing the range and scale of the exploration environment. From the algorithmic perspective, we discuss the following extensions to the original NeBula framework: (i) large-scale geometric and semantic environment mapping; (ii) an adaptive positioning system; (iii) probabilistic traversability analysis and local planning; (iv) large-scale POMDP-based global motion planning and exploration behavior; (v) large-scale networking and decentralized reasoning; (vi) communication-aware mission planning; and (vii) multi-modal ground-aerial exploration solutions. We demonstrate the application and deployment of the presented systems and solutions in various large-scale underground environments, including limestone mine exploration scenarios as well as deployment in the DARPA Subterranean challenge.
View on arXiv@article{agha2025_2504.13461,
title={ An Addendum to NeBula: Towards Extending TEAM CoSTAR's Solution to Larger Scale Environments },
author={ Ali Agha and Kyohei Otsu and Benjamin Morrell and David D. Fan and Sung-Kyun Kim and Muhammad Fadhil Ginting and Xianmei Lei and Jeffrey Edlund and Seyed Fakoorian and Amanda Bouman and Fernando Chavez and Taeyeon Kim and Gustavo J. Correa and Maira Saboia and Angel Santamaria-Navarro and Brett Lopez and Boseong Kim and Chanyoung Jung and Mamoru Sobue and Oriana Claudia Peltzer and Joshua Ott and Robert Trybula and Thomas Touma and Marcel Kaufmann and Tiago Stegun Vaquero and Torkom Pailevanian and Matteo Palieri and Yun Chang and Andrzej Reinke and Matthew Anderson and Frederik E.T. Schöller and Patrick Spieler and Lillian M. Clark and Avak Archanian and Kenny Chen and Hovhannes Melikyan and Anushri Dixit and Harrison Delecki and Daniel Pastor and Barry Ridge and Nicolas Marchal and Jose Uribe and Sharmita Dey and Kamak Ebadi and Kyle Coble and Alexander Nikitas Dimopoulos and Vivek Thangavelu and Vivek S. Varadharajan and Nicholas Palomo and Antoni Rosinol and Arghya Chatterjee and Christoforos Kanellakis and Bjorn Lindqvist and Micah Corah and Kyle Strickland and Ryan Stonebraker and Michael Milano and Christopher E. Denniston and Sami Sahnoune and Thomas Claudet and Seungwook Lee and Gautam Salhotra and Edward Terry and Rithvik Musuku and Robin Schmid and Tony Tran and Ara Kourchians and Justin Schachter and Hector Azpurua and Levi Resende and Arash Kalantari and Jeremy Nash and Josh Lee and Christopher Patterson and Jennifer G. Blank and Kartik Patath and Yuki Kubo and Ryan Alimo and Yasin Almalioglu and Aaron Curtis and Jacqueline Sly and Tesla Wells and Nhut T. Ho and Mykel Kochenderfer and Giovanni Beltrame and George Nikolakopoulos and David Shim and Luca Carlone and Joel Burdick },
journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.13461},
year={ 2025 }
}