Abstract

Martian dust storms cut off communication and break standard robot navigation. We built a hybrid system that keeps robot swarms alive during these blackouts and recovers their data quickly. Our rovers use Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) on their own edge processors to navigate without a signal. Once the storm passes, we use the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) on a cloud platform to merge the fragmented maps the rovers collected while they were offline. We tested this system in a Robot Operating System 2 (ROS 2) and Gazebo environment using a simulated 10-rover Martian deployment. During the simulated blackout, our SNN edge navigation achieved a 92.0% survival rate, outperforming traditional planners like Dynamic Window Approach (DWA) (29.0%) and Timed Elastic Band (TEB) (24.3%). The neuromorphic approach also reduced overall system power consumption by 80.0% compared to a traditional unoptimized Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)-based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) baseline. For the map recovery phase, our simulated QAOA proof-of-concept evaluated the map constraints in just 1.2 ms, compared to 50.0 ms for a classical Generalized Iterative Closest Point (G-ICP) and g2o pose-graph approach. Despite the noisy sensor data collected during the blackout, the final quantum-stitched map achieved an 8.54 cm Root Mean Square Error (RMSE). These results show that combining edge-based neuromorphic processing with quantum cloud computing secures swarm survival and accelerates post-disaster data recovery for deep-space missions.

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