When
Tuesday, April 7, 2026, at 4:00 p.m.
Renato Zanetti
Associate Professor
Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics
The University of Texas at Austin
"Nonlinear Filtering for Terrain Relative Navigation"
AME Lecture Hall, Room S202 | Zoom link
Abstract: Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN) leverages onboard sensors to increase positioning accuracy by matching measurements to a known map of the terrain. It is used to aid inertial navigation systems in place of GPS/GNSS or in environments where satellite navigation aiding is not available, such as underwater vehicles or spacecraft exploring extraterrestrial bodies. TRN can be performed with active range sensing (lidar, radar, or sonar) or passive imaging (cameras).
This talk will discuss active TRN approaches researched by our group at the University of Texas at Austin, with particular emphasis on challenges posed by the correlation between pre-processors and the navigation filter. Pre-processors are often used to correlate the sensor data to the map of the terrain outside of the navigation filter. Pre-processors generate a derived measurement of the vehicle’s position to be ingested by the navigation filter.
Finally, this talk will discuss the use of a nonlinear estimation filter, the Particle Mass Filter (PMF), as an alternative to pre-processing. Several new improvements to the PMF are discussed to enhance the overall navigation accuracy.
Bio: Renato Zanetti joined the Department or Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) in January 2017. Prior to joining UT, Renato worked for almost a decade in the private and government sectors.
From 2007 to 2013 Renato was an engineer at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory. During this time he worked on every current and planned crewed NASA vehicle: the International Space Station (ISS), the Space Shuttle and Orion. Renato was the lead relative navigation designer for Orbital Sciences Cygnus vehicle, which completed several successful cargo resupply missions to the ISS. From 2013 to 2017 Renato was an engineer at the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC). During this time he served as one of the lead designers of the absolute navigation filter for Orion Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT1), which successfully flew in December 2014. He was responsible for the design, coding and testing of two navigation Computer Software Units (CSUs). During the EFT1 flight, he monitored the navigation telemetry from the engineering support room in Denver (Raptor). Prior to departing from NASA, Renato delivered the design and code of three CSUs for Orion’s next flight Artemis 1, which successfully completed its mission in 2022. For sixteen months between 2024 and 2024 Renato was at Blue Origin leading the navigation design of the lunar Human Lander System.
Renato is a Fellow of the American Astronautical Society (AAS) and an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). He is a former chair of the AIAA Astrodynamics Technical Committee and of the AAS Space-Flight Mechanics Technical Committee. Renato and the Orion GN&C group received the prestigious NASA Software of the year award in 2015. He is also the recipient of a NASA Technical Excellence Award for outstanding achievement in Orion navigation design, two NASA On the Spot awards and several Team and Group Achievements Awards.