Perspectives for miniaturized, distributed, networked cooperating systems for space exploration

Space exploration raises challenging autonomy requirements due to significant signal propagation delays and data transmission interruptions in real-time critical situations. This is exacerbated by poorly known working environments and high noise levels. Currently a paradigm shift from traditional large multifunctional spacecraft towards networked formations of distributed small spacecraft is emerging. This places even more emphasis on related research topics for autonomous reactions, in particular