Nebula Public Library

Commonly used classical cryptographic protocols, such as the RSA-protocol, rely on the hardness of computational problems. With the advent of quantum computing (QC), the hardness assumptions of these problems is nullified, since they can be solved efficiently on a QC. On the other hand, the security of Quantum key distribution (QKD) rests upon the very laws of physics and guarantees information-theoretic security, which not only enables tap-proof communication at present, but also prevents any future technology to crack encrypted messages.

The general goal of this project is to operationalize and deepen the findings and conclusions of the initial project “Exploring AI capabilities to support the evaluation process of ideas submitted in the OSIP platform.” which demonstrated that AI techniques and software (COGITO Discover) could be used positively to enhance and ease the evaluation of ideas, by providing some new indicators such as idea novelty (scoring 0-100) based on the notion of similarity between ideas and innovation projects.

Space debris is mainly constituted by small items which cannot be de-orbited by using specific satellites launched from the Earth due to costs and difficulty in miniaturizing robotic arms or other rigid actuation systems. In a long-period vision, small cleaning satellites, with a size comparable with the debris to remove, can be manufactured in Space. Traditional robotic systems would be extremely expensive and some also would have problems in grabbing objects with undefined shape.

Space missions benefit greatly by the capability of the on-board GNC system to adapt rapidly to unknown environment. Autonomous vision-based navigation is a particular technology under implementation in several ESA missions. One of the most interesting applications in that field is the proximity operations around a small asteroid, like those in HERA.
The goal of this activity was to develop a navigation algorithm with the capability to fly over an unknown terrain and achieve better navigation performances than current vision-based techniques based on unknown feature tracking.