Welcome to my personal research site. I am a Beatriz Galindo Junior Fellow and Distinguished Professor at the University of Malaga's Department of Systems Engineering and Automation, where I've been serving since Dec'24. I work at the Space Robotics Lab alongside Prof. Carlos Pérez del Pulgar. We conduct research at the intersection of robotics, advanced mechanical design, computer vision, and space exploration. My research focuses on the study of innovative robotic mobility systems and autonomous navigation pipelines, pioneering advancements in faster lunar locomotion and single-photon vision. My ultimate goal is to enable planetary robots to more efficiently, reliably, and rapidly navigate and characterize some of the most extreme (unstructured, dynamic, and visually degraded) environments with minimal human intervention, from lunar PSRs to underground martian caves.
In July 2022, I founded HERMES, an international working group formed by researchers and scientists working on heterogeneous multirobot cooperation for exploration and science in extreme environments. We have hosted several workshops at ICRA'23 and ICRA'24.
I did my postdoc at EPFL's Advanced Quantum Architecture Lab with Prof. Edoardo Charbon and my PhD at Tohoku University under the supervision of Prof. Kazuya Yoshida. I have also held research and technical positions at the European Space Agency and the German Aerospace Center.

• CV
• Long Biography

Active Research Lines

Selected Publications

Enabling Faster Locomotion of Planetary Rovers with a Mechanically-Hybrid Suspension

D. Rodríguez-Martínez*, K. Uno*, K. Sawa, M. Uda, G. Kudo, G. Hernan Diaz, A. Umemura, S. Santra, K.Yoshida

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 9(1), 619-626, Jan 2024. *indicates equal contribution and shared authorship. [Video]

A lunar reconnaissance drone for cooperative exploration and high-resolution mapping of extreme locations

R. Tonasso, D. Tataru, H. Rauch, V. Pozsgay, T. Pfeiffer, E. Uythoven, D. Rodríguez-Martínez

Acta Astronautica, 218, 1-17, May 2024

High-speed mobility in planetary surfaces: a technical review

D. Rodríguez-Martínez, M. Van Winnendael, K. Yoshida

Journal of Field Robotics, 36(8), 1436-1455, 2019

The effects of increasing velocity on the tractive performance of planetary rovers

D. Rodríguez-Martínez, F. Buse, M. Van Winnendael, K. Yoshida

15th ISTVS Conference, Prague, Czech Republic, 2019. (best paper of the conference award) [Video]

• Full Publication List

Contact

Address University of Malaga, Escuela de Ingenierías Industriales, Office 2.119.D, 29071 Malaga, Spain
Email david (dot) rm (at) uma (dot) es

For UMA students

• If you are undegraduate or graduate student at UMA interested in conducting your TFG or TFM in our lab, check the list of available projects here. For a list of available projects under my supervision check here (link to be available soon...).

PhD and Postdoc applications

• Check all our open positions here.
• If you are a PhD or Postdoc interested in conducting a research stay in our lab, send me an email using "Research Exchange" as the email subject, including the following information: 1) your CV, 2) preferred duration for your stay and desired starting date, 3) whether you have secured funding to support your stay with us or need financial support, and a 4) brief description of your current research and how an stay with us could support/complement/enhance it.

Scholarship applications

• In the event that no open positions are available in our lab, I often assist national and international students interested in conducting an internship, master's, or PhD in our group with their applications to a number of scholarship programs.
• Note that our lab does not offer any scholarships.
• If interested, send me an email using "Scholarship Application" as the email subject, including the following information: 1) your CV, 2) targeted scholarship program with due dates for submission of your application and earliest starting date if successful, 3) a short description (250-500 words) of the project you would like to conduct, and 4) comments on your experience/prior work related to the project.

Blog

• [August 2024] My experience as a postdoc at EPFL (Switzerland)
• [May 2024] The lost utility of academic conferences
• [May 2024] Not your lab, not your monkeys
• [July 2020] Do the opposite
• [July 2018] The pace of the elder
• [July 2017] Life after college: how to find your own compass (when everyone tells you not to)