"Avoid the crater ahead" - Lunar navigation and AI

Getting lost on the Moon is a common problem, so it is reassuring to know that when you do miss the next lunar highway exit, AI software can guide you safely to where you want to go. NASA's Frontier Development Lab (FDL) seeks to "apply AI technologies to science to push the frontiers of research and develop new tools to solve some of the biggest problems that humanity faces". Each year, the FDL highlights a series of problems that AI could be used to rectify - involving commercial partners (like Intel), research talent (those studying data science at a post doc level) and large data sets. This ensures that participants have the maximum available scope to innovate, explaining the high success rates of the programme. One of the problems outlined at the 2018 FDL was "Localisation: Merging orbital maps with surface-perspective imagery".