NEWS    MERL Presents Set-Based Reachability Research for Spacecraft Guidance at NASA Johnson Space Center

Date released: June 3, 2026

  •  NEWS    MERL Presents Set-Based Reachability Research for Spacecraft Guidance at NASA Johnson Space Center
  • Date:

    April 15, 2026 - April 16, 2026

  • Where:

    NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston

  • Description:

    MERL researchers Avishai Weiss and Abraham Vinod visited NASA Johnson Space Center to present recent advances in set-based reachability analysis for spacecraft guidance, navigation, and control, with an emphasis on powered descent guidance for lunar landing. They delivered an invited talk titled “Safe and Optimal Control for Spacecraft GN&C using Set-Based Reachability Analysis.”

    The presentation introduced MERL’s recently developed set-based computational techniques for safe, optimal, and robust spacecraft control, including methods that specialize the approach for computing maximum divert envelopes and enabling real-time landing footprint prediction for landers. The talk was attended by researchers from NASA and the University of Washington, and generated extensive technical discussion.

  • MERL Contacts:
  • Research Areas:

    Control, Dynamical Systems, Optimization, Robotics

    •  Kamath, A., Vinod, A.P., Elango, P., Di Cairano, S., Weiss, A., "Robust Optimal Control for Autonomous Precision Landing via Set-based Dynamic Programming", AIAA SciTech Forum, DOI: 10.2514/​6.2026-0970, January 2026, pp. 2026-0970.
      BibTeX TR2026-015 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Kamath2026jan,
      • author = {Kamath, Abhinav and Vinod, Abraham P. and Elango, Purnanand and {Di Cairano}, Stefano and Weiss, Avishai},
      • title = {{Robust Optimal Control for Autonomous Precision Landing via Set-based Dynamic Programming}},
      • booktitle = {AIAA SciTech 2026 Forum},
      • year = 2026,
      • pages = {2026--0970},
      • month = jan,
      • publisher = {AIAA},
      • doi = {10.2514/6.2026-0970},
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-015}
      • }
    •  Vinod, A.P., Kamath, A., Weiss, A., Di Cairano, S., "Set-based lossless convexification for a class of robust nonlinear optimal control problems", IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), DOI: 10.1109/​CDC57313.2025.11312593, December 2025, pp. 1769-1776.
      BibTeX TR2025-160 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Vinod2025dec,
      • author = {Vinod, Abraham P. and Kamath, Abhinav and Weiss, Avishai and {Di Cairano}, Stefano},
      • title = {{Set-based lossless convexification for a class of robust nonlinear optimal control problems}},
      • booktitle = {IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC)},
      • year = 2025,
      • pages = {1769--1776},
      • month = dec,
      • doi = {10.1109/CDC57313.2025.11312593},
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-160}
      • }
    •  Vinod, A.P., "pycvxset: A Python package for convex set manipulation", American Control Conference (ACC), DOI: 10.23919/​ACC63710.2025.11107986, June 2025, pp. 2515-2521.
      BibTeX TR2025-086 PDF Software
      • @inproceedings{Vinod2025jun,
      • author = {Vinod, Abraham P.},
      • title = {{pycvxset: A Python package for convex set manipulation}},
      • booktitle = {American Control Conference (ACC)},
      • year = 2025,
      • pages = {2515--2521},
      • month = jun,
      • doi = {10.23919/ACC63710.2025.11107986},
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-086}
      • }