Details of the Researcher

PHOTO

Santra Shreya
Section
Graduate School of Engineering
Job title
Specially Appointed Senior Assistant Professor(Research)
Degree

  • 博士（工学）（東北大学）

  • Ｍ．Ｓ．（国際宇宙大学）

  • Ｍ．Ｓ．（スコルコボ科学技術大学）

Education 4

  • Tohoku University, Sendai, JAPAN　Department of Aerospace Engineering　PhD in Space Robotics (Recipient of Japanese Government MEXT Scholarship)

    2018/10 - 2021/09

  • Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Moscow, RUSSIA　Department of Engineering　MSc. in Space and Engineering Systems

    2016/09 - 2018/07

  • International Space University, Strasbourg, FRANCE　Masters of Space Studies

    2014/09 - 2015/12

  • National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, INDIA　Department of Electrical and Electronics　Bachelor of Technology in Electrical and Electronics Engineering

    2010/07 - 2014/06

Research Areas 1

  • Aerospace, marine, and maritime Engineering / Aerospace engineering / Space Robotics, Controls, Coordination, AI & Reinforcement Learning

Awards 8

  1. Patent No. 383226

    2021/11　Indian Patents Act,1970　An Autonomous Ultraviolet Mobile Sanitising Robot

  2. DAAD Short Term Research Grant

    2020/10　DAAD Germany　PhD exchange at DLR Germany

  3. Second Global Prize Grand Winner for UV Robot Design

    2020/09　Micron Inc　‘UVtar : The Savage Irradiator’ by Team Trishul

  4. Caltech Space Challenge 2019

    2019/03　Caltech　SILENUS: A Mission Concept Investigating the Habitability of Enceladus

  5. MEXT Scholarship for PhD

    2018/10　MEXT Japan

  6. Skoltech Achiever’s Award

    2018/01　Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology　Awarded for Outstanding Academic Performance

  7. Space Generation Leadership Award

    2017/09　Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC)

  8. Satellite Futures Scholarship

    2015/09　Space & Satellite Professionals International (SSPI)

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Papers 30

  1. Grouser wheel high-speed traction performance: DEM simulation and experimental result

    Takehana, K., Kenny, G., Sawa, K., Hurrell, J., Uno, K., Santra, S., Yoshida, K.

    Journal of Terramechanics　120　2025

    DOI： 10.1016/j.jterra.2025.101084 　

    ISSN： 0022-4898

  2. Rutting Caused by Grouser Wheel of Planetary Rover in Single-Wheel Testbed: LiDAR Topographic Scanning and Analysis

    Keisuke Takehana, Vinicius Emanoel Ares, Shreya Santra, Kentaro Uno, Eric Rohmer, Kazuya Yoshida

    Aerospace　2025/01

    DOI： 10.3390/aerospace12010071 　

  3. Evaluation of Grouser Wheel Traction Performance in High-Speed by Single-Wheel Test

    Keisuke Takehana, Kenta Sawa, Kentaro Uno, Shreya Santra, Kazuya Yoshida

    2024/10

  4. Modeling of Terrain Deformation by a Grouser Wheel for Lunar Rover Simulation

    Junnosuke Kamohara, Vinicius Ares, James Hurrell, Keisuke Takehana, Antoine Richard, Shreya Santra, Kentaro Uno, Eric Rohmer, Kazuya Yoshida

    2024/08/24

    DOI： 10.48550/arXiv.2408.13468 　

    More details Close

    Simulation of vehicle motion in planetary environments is challenging. This is due to the modeling of complex terrain, optical conditions, and terrain-aware vehicle dynamics. One of the critical issues of typical simulators is that they assume terrain is a rigid body, which limits their ability to render wheel traces and compute the wheel-terrain interactions. This prevents, for example, the use of wheel traces as landmarks for localization, as well as the accurate simulation of motion. In the context of lunar regolith, the surface is not rigid but granular. As such, there are differences in the rover's motion, such as sinkage and slippage, and a clear wheel trace left behind the rover, compared to that on a rigid terrain. This study presents a novel approach to integrating a terramechanics-aware terrain deformation engine to simulate a realistic wheel trace in a digital lunar environment. By leveraging Discrete Element Method simulation results alongside experimental single-wheel test data, we construct a regression model to derive deformation height as a function of contact normal force. The region of interest in a height map is retrieved from the wheel poses. The elevation values of corresponding pixels are subsequently modified using contact normal forces and the regression model. Finally, we apply the determined elevation change to each mesh vertex to render wheel traces during runtime. The deformation engine is integrated into our ongoing development of a lunar simulator based on NVIDIA's Omniverse IsaacSim. We hypothesize that our work will be crucial to testing perception and downstream navigation systems under conditions similar to outdoor or terrestrial fields. A demonstration video is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpzD0h-5hv4

  5. Integration of Slip Detection and Grip Force Control in an Autonomous Robot Assembly Task for Space Applications Peer-reviewed

    Ishrath, S Barat, Gustavo H, H. Diaz, Shreya Santra, Kazuya Yoshida, Harish J. Palanthandalam-Madapusi

    2024/08

  6. Communication-constrained Path Planning for Multi-Rover Exploration on the Lunar Surface

    Shreya Santra, Emanuel Staudinger, Kazuya Yoshida

    2024/08

  7. Risk-Aware Coverage Path Planning for Lunar Micro-Rovers Leveraging Global and Local Environmental Data Peer-reviewed

    Shreya Santra, Kentaro Uno, Gen Kudo, Kazuya Yoshida

    2024/04/29

    DOI： 10.48550/arXiv.2404.18721 　

    More details Close

    This paper presents a novel 3D myopic coverage path planning algorithm for lunar micro-rovers that can explore unknown environments with limited sensing and computational capabilities. The algorithm expands upon traditional non-graph path planning methods to accommodate the complexities of lunar terrain, utilizing global data with local topographic features into motion cost calculations. The algorithm also integrates localization and mapping to update the rover's pose and map the environment. The resulting environment map's accuracy is evaluated and tested in a 3D simulator. Outdoor field tests were conducted to validate the algorithm's efficacy in sim-to-real scenarios. The results showed that the algorithm could achieve high coverage with low energy consumption and computational cost, while incrementally exploring the terrain and avoiding obstacles. This study contributes to the advancement of path planning methodologies for space exploration, paving the way for efficient, scalable and autonomous exploration of lunar environments by small rovers.

  8. Enabling Faster Locomotion of Planetary Rovers With a Mechanically-Hybrid Suspension

    Rodriguez-Martinez, D., Uno, K., Sawa, K., Uda, M., Kudo, G., Diaz, G.H., Umemura, A., Santra, S., Yoshida, K.

    IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters　9　(1)　2024

    DOI： 10.1109/LRA.2023.3335769 　

    ISSN： 2377-3766

  9. OmniLRS: A Photorealistic Simulator for Lunar Robotics

    Antoine Richard, Junnosuke Kamohara, Kentaro Uno, Shreya Santra, Dave van der Meer, Miguel Olivares-Mendez, Kazuya Yoshida

    2023/09/16

    More details Close

    Developing algorithms for extra-terrestrial robotic exploration has always been challenging. Along with the complexity associated with these environments, one of the main issues remains the evaluation of said algorithms. With the regained interest in lunar exploration, there is also a demand for quality simulators that will enable the development of lunar robots. % In this paper, we explain how we built a Lunar simulator based on Isaac Sim, Nvidia's robotic simulator. In this paper, we propose Omniverse Lunar Robotic-Sim (OmniLRS) that is a photorealistic Lunar simulator based on Nvidia's robotic simulator. This simulation provides fast procedural environment generation, multi-robot capabilities, along with synthetic data pipeline for machine-learning applications. It comes with ROS1 and ROS2 bindings to control not only the robots, but also the environments. This work also performs sim-to-real rock instance segmentation to show the effectiveness of our simulator for image-based perception. Trained on our synthetic data, a yolov8 model achieves performance close to a model trained on real-world data, with 5% performance gap. When finetuned with real data, the model achieves 14% higher average precision than the model trained on real-world data, demonstrating our simulator's photorealism.% to realize sim-to-real. The code is fully open-source, accessible here: https://github.com/AntoineRichard/LunarSim, and comes with demonstrations.

  10. Integration of Vision-based Object Detection and Grasping for Articulated Manipulator in Lunar Conditions

    Camille Boucher, Gustavo H. Diaz, Shreya Santra, Kentaro Uno, Kazuya Yoshida

    2023/09/03

    More details Close

    The integration of vision-based frameworks to achieve lunar robot applications faces numerous challenges such as terrain configuration or extreme lighting conditions. This paper presents a generic task pipeline using object detection, instance segmentation and grasp detection, that can be used for various applications by using the results of these vision-based systems in a different way. We achieve a rock stacking task on a non-flat surface in difficult lighting conditions with a very good success rate of 92%. Eventually, we present an experiment to assemble 3D printed robot components to initiate more complex tasks in the future.

  11. CloverNet: A Real-Time Network for Semantic Segmentation Onboard Edge Devices Towards Planetary Exploration

    Damiano Gasperini, Watcharawut Masawat, Shreya Santra, Kazuya Yoshida

    2023 9th International Conference on Control, Decision and Information Technologies (CoDIT)　2023/07/03

    Publisher: IEEE

    DOI： 10.1109/codit58514.2023.10284509 　

  12. Refining of Localization and Mapping by Multiple Rovers for Planetary Exploration Peer-reviewed

    Ayumi Umemura, Kentaro Uno, Shreya Santra, Miguel Olivares-Mendez, Kazuya Yoshida

    Heterogeneous Multi-robot Cooperation for Exploration and Science in Extreme Environments (HERMES), IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)　2023/06

  13. A multi-lander New Frontiers mission concept study for Enceladus: SILENUS Peer-reviewed

    Erica Nathan, Katiyayni Balachandran, Paolo Cappuccio, Julia Di, Kelsey Doerksen, Alessia Gloder, Monica Li, Lotfi Massarweh, Thomas Peev, Marc Rovira-Navarro, Dan Limonchik, Shreya Santra

    Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences　9　2022/10/14

    DOI： 10.3389/fspas.2022.995941 　

    eISSN： 2296-987X

  14. High-fidelity Robust 3-D Lunar Environment Generation Platform for Micro-rover Simulation-based Tasks Invited

    Watcharawut Masawa, Shreya Santra, Tamir Blum, Gabin Paille, Kazuya Yoshida

    Proceedings of the International Astronautical Congress, IAC- 2022, Sep, 2022　2022/09

  15. An Investigation of Fast Radio Bursts and its Feasibility as Technosignature Invited

    Koena Maji, Aniket Prasad, Anuj Soni, Shreya Santra

    Proceedings of the International Astronautical Congress, IAC-2022　2022/09

    ISSN： 0074-1795

  16. Design and Development of a Health Monitoring Companion Robot for Crew Members in Space Invited

    Shreya Santra, Shivam K. Singh, Shraman K. Bohra, Yamini Tripathi, Soutik Nandy

    Proceedings of the International Astronautical Congress, IAC 2022　2022/09

    ISSN： 0074-1795

  17. Experimental Validation of Deterministic Radio Propagation Model developed for Communication-aware Path Planning Peer-reviewed

    Shreya Santra, Leonard B. Paet, Mickael Laine, Kazuya Yoshida, Emanuel Staudinger

    IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering　2021-August　1241-1246　2021/08/23

    DOI： 10.1109/CASE49439.2021.9551653 　

    ISSN： 2161-8070

    eISSN： 2161-8089

  18. Maintaining Connectivity in Multi-Rover Networks for Lunar Exploration Missions Peer-reviewed

    Leonard Bryan Paet, Shreya Santra, Mickael Laine, Kazuya Yoshida

    IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering　2021-August　1539-1546　2021/08/23

    DOI： 10.1109/CASE49439.2021.9551434 　

    ISSN： 2161-8070

    eISSN： 2161-8089

  19. Cooperation and Capacity-building of Asia-Pacific Countries for Space Exploration Invited

    Harlee Quizzagan, Shreya Santra, Priyanka Das Rajkakati, Yebin Kim

    Global Space Exploration Conference (GLOC)　2021/06

  20. Radio Propagation Modelling for Coordination of Lunar Micro-Rovers Peer-reviewed

    Shreya Santra, Leonard B. Paet, Emanuel Staudinger, Kazuya Yoshida

    International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space 2020　2020/10

  21. Optical communications for small satellites: A review of pointing strategies and requirements optimization

    Desire Muhire, Daria Stepanova, Shreya Santra, Prerna Baranwal, Marco Romero, Rushanka Amrutkar, Sébastien Bonnart, Devanshu Jha, Aaron Zucherman

    Proceedings of the International Astronautical Congress, IAC　2020-October　2020/10

    ISSN： 0074-1795

  22. Conceptual design of a mars constellation for global communication services using small satellites

    Daniel Wischert, Prerna Baranwal, Sébastien Bonnart, Marco Casanova Álvarez, Ricardo Colpari, Mohaddese Daryabari, Shubham Desai, Simran Dhoju, George Fajardo, Bhavin Faldu, Elena López Contreras González, Purichmun Low, Kai Malcolm, Simran Mardhani, Pablo Miralles, Joshit Mohanty, Sondes Morchedi, Harshal More, Héctor Ortega-González, Suraj Parasuram, Marco Romero, Shreya Santra, Apoorv Somkuwar, Krishna Soni, Daria Stepanova, Kathiravan Thangavel, Kanchan Vinayak Bhale, Rida Zainab

    Proceedings of the International Astronautical Congress, IAC　2020-October　2020/10

    ISSN： 0074-1795

  23. Rapid Mission Concept Development at the 2019 Caltech Space Challenge: A Small Lander Network Studying the Habitability of Enceladus Invited Peer-reviewed

    Kelsey Doerksen, Katiyayni Balachandran, Paolo Cappuccio, Julia Di, Jared Fuchs, Alessia Gloder, Rebecca Jolitz, Monica Li, Dan Limonchik, Lotfi Massarweh, Atila Meszaros, Daniel Naftalovich, Erica Nathan, Thomas Peev, Marc Rovira-Navarro, Shreya Santra

    3rd Symposium on Space Educational Activities　2020/07

  24. Cosmox Federated Satellite Systems Inter-Satellite Communication Network to Enable Real-Time Earth Observation Invited

    Mina Takla, Camilo Reyes, Shreya Santra

    Proceedings of International Astronautical Congress 2019　2019/10

  25. SILENUS: A Mission Concept Investigating the Habitability of Enceladus Peer-reviewed

    Katiyayni Balachandran, Kelsey Doerksen, Paolo Cappuccio, Julia Di, Jared Fuchs, Alessia Gloder, Rebecca Jolitz, Monica Li, Dan Limonchik, Lotfi Massarweh, Atila Meszaros, Daniel Naftalovich, Erica Nathan, Thomas Peev, Marc Rovira-Navarro, Shreya Santra

    EPSC-DPSJointMeeting 2019　13　(1302-1)　2019/09

  26. BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY FOR MAPPING ASTEROIDS AND ISRU ON THE MOON: CREATING A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS ECOSYSTEM IN SPACE WHILE IMPLEMENTING THE UN SDGs

    Camilo reyes Mantilla, Mclee Kerolle, Shreya Santra, Mina Takla

    Space Resources Roundtable (SRR) / Planetary & Terrestrial Mining Sciences Symposium (PTMSS) 2019At: Golden, Colorado　2019/06

  27. Key challenges in establishing laser space communication standards and recommendations of the SGC space technologies working group

    Luisa Buinhas, Doris Grosse, Shreya Santra, Alena Probst, Graham Johnson, James Murdza, Rayan Imam, Sarah Wittig, Nathaniel Shearer

    Proceedings of the International Astronautical Congress, IAC　2018-October　2018/10

    ISSN： 0074-1795

  28. Analysis of radiation environment and its effect on spacecraft in different orbits

    Md Mahbubur Rahman, Divya Shankar, Shreya Santra

    Proceedings of the International Astronautical Congress, IAC　12　8073-8079　2017/09

    ISSN： 0074-1795

  29. Concept study of communication architecture for a cis-lunar human- Robotic Mission

    Shreya Santra, Divya Shankar, Punyapat Saksupapchon, Dzmitry Tsetserukou, Juan Esteban Gramajo Gonzalez, Matteo Aquilano

    Proceedings of the International Astronautical Congress, IAC　1　119-127　2017

    ISSN： 0074-1795

  30. A new initiative to bridge the gap between earth observation data and end users: The climate online user data (CLOUD)

    Shreya Santra, Joe Cotti, Rene Horacio Michel Valencia, Cristina De Persis, Tara Halt, Noemie Bernede, Kingsley Ukaegbu

    Proceedings of the International Astronautical Congress, IAC　2016

    ISSN： 0074-1795

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Teaching Experience 2

  1. Space Robotics Training Programme　Spaceonova India Pvt. Ltd

  2. Computer Aided Problem Solving　Tohoku University, Japan