The GOC is researching innovative communication technologies for future Mars explorations with swarms of robots.

The Communication Engineering Department of GOC is collaborating with the DLR Institute of Communications and Navigation in Oberpfaffenhofen as part of a two-year DFG project. The goal is to explore a highly integrated connection between swarm-based exploration and wireless communication. The focus is on developing an exploration algorithm that can adapt to variable conditions and disturbances in wireless communication. The communication between the robots is designed to account for uncertainties in the transmission of exploration variables. Thus, the project follows an integrative approach of mutual awareness. Additionally, the Communication Engineering Department is researching new methods of semantic communication for processing and transmitting measured sensor data from the exploration. In contrast to classical Shannon communication, the emphasis of semantic communication is not only on the reliable transmission of sensor data. Instead, transmitters and receivers are designed using machine learning techniques to efficiently transmit the relevant information contained in the sensor data for exploration.