Toward Persistent Space Presence: Advances in Artificial Intelligence and Soft Robotics for Adaptive and Perceptive Space Robotics

Dear Colleagues,

Space robotics has rapidly advanced from supporting narrowly defined missions to enabling long-term autonomous operations in orbital, planetary, and deep-space environments. As future missions move toward persistent space presence, robots must not only execute pre-programmed routines but also adapt, learn, and collaborate under uncertain and dynamic conditions.

Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and soft robotics are reshaping the future of autonomous systems in space. AI enables robots to achieve self-awareness of their morphology, perform goal-directed planning, reason under uncertainty, and adapt to harsh and evolving environments. Complementarily, soft robotic designs provide robustness, compliance, and safety when interacting with unstructured or unpredictable surroundings. Together, these technologies pave the way toward scalable, fault-tolerant, and self-adaptive robotic systems capable of sustained operations in extreme outer space conditions.

This Special Issue aims to at bringing together contributions that explore state-of-the-art methods, architectures, and technologies in artificial intelligence and soft robotics for space robotics. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Embodied intelligence for robotic self-awareness, resilience, and adaptation in space;
• Soft robotics for compliant manipulation and locomotion in orbital and planetary environments;
• Learning-based approaches for long-term autonomy under uncertainty;
• Decentralized multi-agent planning and collaboration for in-orbit servicing and planetary construction;
• Perception, sensing, and multimodal integration for persistent space operations;
• Robust Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) architectures for space robotic systems;
• Simulation platforms and terrestrial testbeds for validating space robotic autonomy.

We welcome research articles, review articles, and communications that address these challenges from both theoretical and experimental perspectives.

Dr. Robin Chhabra
Dr. Michael C. F. Bazzocchi
Guest Editors

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• space robotics
• embodied artificial intelligence
• soft robotics
• multi-modal perception
• multi-agent collaboration
• guidance, navigation, and control (GNC)
• long-term autonomy
• perception and adaptation
• in-orbit servicing and construction