UCF engineers build real-time digital twin of RE-RASSOR rover

UCF industrial engineering professor Luis Carlos Rabelo leads an AI-driven digital twin project for planetary rovers, intended to support robotic exploration in distant environments where communication delays complicate operations.

Rabelo said a digital twin’s update frequency must reflect the physical system’s behavior, so robotic systems must be modeled second by second instead of using longer-term predictions of conventional simulations. Rabelo described matching update frequency to the system’s time constant as the difference between a digital twin and conventional simulation. In one test scenario, Rabelo used a simulated three-second delay each way, a six-second round trip, so operators could predict rover behavior and spot problems ahead of time. The scenario shows how operators could anticipate rover behavior and identify problems before they occur despite round-trip delay.

The team’s platform is RE-RASSOR, the Research and Education Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot, a low-cost, 3D-printed educational rover adapted from NASA’s original RASSOR mining robot.

Gray said each rover costs about $400 to make, a price he said could let university laboratories with limited resources run advanced robotics research. The low cost follows from the rover’s 3D-printed, educational design, which the team uses to test digital twin software on inexpensive hardware. Senior design teams of undergraduates built the rover prototypes with guidance from Rabelo, Gray and Metzger, and the project won $5,000 from the Florida Space Grant Consortium via UCF’s Florida Space Institute.

Carson Gray ’26, a UCF aerospace engineering graduate student and mechanical engineering alum, helped create the digital-twin software and guided the student teams that built the rover prototypes. During a demonstration, Gray showed that an iPhone camera and LiDAR sensor on the rover let the system build a 3D virtual model of the robot and its surroundings as it happens. Gray described the system as a two-way street: the robot sends its position, operators can test moves in the digital twin, and commands are then sent to the robot so the two mirror each other, a setup he said aims for the physical robot and its digital twin to mirror each other.

Gray gave a lunar example in which operators could check in simulation whether a rover can cross a bumpy, rocky bump successfully, then perform the move on the real rover with more confidence. “So you can see in the simulation if it can go over this bump successfully,” Gray said. The lunar example shows how simulation can build confidence before commanding a real rover across uncertain, bumpy terrain.

UCF says the project came from a partnership with Mexico’s Universidad Politécnica de Durango. Rabelo and UCF planetary scientist Phillip Metzger advised an international senior design project during the 2025-26 academic year to create an AI-driven digital twin of the RASSOR robot, and Metzger directs UCF’s Stephen Hawking Center for Microgravity Research and Education. The project’s central goal was to study how digital twins might let operators manage communication delays, given that reaching a robot takes longer the farther it is from Earth.

Rabelo envisions teams of autonomous robots performing specialized moon south-pole logistics tasks—surveying terrain, identifying resources, collecting materials and transporting equipment—coordinated by a shared digital twin of the entire lunar area.

The Florida Space Institute’s robotics division designs and tests autonomous robotic systems for space exploration, from planetary rovers to advanced robotic arms. The FSI Robotics Lab uses specialized planetary rovers that can navigate diverse terrain, collect scientific data, and perform tasks autonomously.

EZ-RASSOR is a student-created, open-source software suite for smaller uncrewed rovers that students continue developing to add control functionality and autonomy for navigation, operations and cooperation. EZ-RASSOR is the primary software platform supporting the student-developed rover control vision, and senior design students keep refining it into an efficient, sustainable rover control system.

NASA, Florida Space Grant and the Florida Space Institute worked with university senior design teams on a half-meter, inexpensive, 3D-printed, customizable robot based on NASA’s RASSOR for STEM classes and clubs. The page describes the model as suitable for STEM classes or clubs and for young students interested in robotics.

The RE-RASSOR Mark 1 rover is four-wheel drive with cycloidal gearboxes delivering high torque at low speeds and runs on a Le Potato and Arduino. The NASA design includes quick-connect interfaces allowing rapid effector configuration, including for systems such as the RE-RASSOR Bucket Drum. Florida Space Institute’s page describes RE-RASSOR as its initial robotic offering and notes low-cost research rovers can drive progress without flight-like robustness. Florida Space Institute lists durability, strength, target tasks and accessible software as components tested and measured with its rovers.

A Florida Space Institute-supported UCF senior design project built a RASSOR-inspired lunar rover with remote operation and a digital twin, and was a finalist at UCF’s 2026 Senior Design Showcase. The project won first place in both the senior design project competition and the poster competition at the 7th Latin American IEOM Conference in Panama City in 2026. The project’s work will appear in Springer Nature’s CCIS proceedings series under the title An AI-Enabled Digital Twin Framework for Safe, Scene-Aware Lunar Rover Autonomy.

The repository documents progression from problem definition through physical rover construction, testing and integration with digital-twin and sensing work. The repository’s author, Matteo Dagostino, assembled the rover and drivetrain from project hardware and printed parts, then fixed drive-hub and gearing problems and retested the system. Dagostino appears as a co-author on the Springer Nature proceedings paper based on his project contributions, though he did not write the later manuscript, and an official Springer/DOI link will appear once publicly available.

Dagostino’s sections of the senior-design reports covered the problem statement, standards, broader impacts on sustainability, and sources of knowledge and best practices. During testing, the rover was unstable and was not moving as expected, prompting the author to look for a hardware cause instead of assuming a software fault. The project author helped set up and integrate the rover’s electrical components, including motor and electronics connections for the physical platform.

The repository says the work moved from defining the teleoperation problem to building and testing the rover, then merging it with digital-twin and sensing efforts. Project Proposal, AS-IS, and TO-BE are the report stages, and the final presentation demonstrated the completed rover and digital twin build.

The files contain development footage from the build and testing process, covering assembly, troubleshooting, integration, and movement tests, plus a final showcase video posted to YouTube. The senior-design work was a collaborative UCF team project, and system-level accomplishments belong to the project team.

In the UCF senior design effort, students built a physical rover, set up remote operation and sensing, and created a digital model of the rover and its surroundings. The RE-RASSOR carries a non-commercial license, can adapt to many needs, and suits STEM classes and clubs.

According to UCF Advancement, the digital twin idea has been developing since the 1980s and focuses on building virtual copies of the physical world as conditions change. Digital twins can scale to represent entire transportation systems or cities, letting experts test and prove concepts before production using constantly updated data.

Orlando’s simulation sector generates $7 billion in regional impact and supports a workforce of 60,000, according to the Orlando Economic Partnership cited by UCF Advancement. UCF launched the School of Modeling, Simulation and Training in 2018 to bring new innovators with strong academic backgrounds into simulation. UCF Advancement presents Orlando as a global hub for modeling, simulation and training, with UCF as a driving force in the field.