Autonomy & software

The rover has to cross rough, unmapped natural terrain without GPS — building its own understanding of the ground beneath it in real time. There is no prior map to localize against and no absolute position fix to correct drift.

What makes it hard

Every part of the stack degrades the others. Odometry drifts, so the map warps; the map warps, so the planner commits to paths that no longer exist; the planner commits, so the vehicle ends up somewhere the estimator did not predict. Getting this to hold together over a long run is the central technical problem of the team.

What you’d get out of it

The autonomy stack in full, not a slice of it — and the chance to work on state estimation and planning problems that most people do not touch until graduate school or industry.