# MARE: An open-source lunar rover simulator with shadow ground truth

- Source: arXiv cs.RO
- Published: 2026-10-21T04:00:00.000Z
- RoboHot: https://robohot.news/en/items/whnd4mpck84k0vb6oqey9qux6
- Original: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.28465

## Summary

The authors present MARE, an open-source lunar rover perception and autonomy simulation suite built on Unreal Engine 5 and ROS 2, comprising three parts: terrain generation, dual-physics lunar rover sensor simulation, and GNC mission control. The simulator provides stereo, lidar, event, and SPAD camera data along with pixel-level ground truth; at low solar elevation angles, the mean IoU between predicted shadows and rendered shadows is 0.79. Stereo depth analysis shows that pixel coverage in shadowed regions is lower than in sunlit regions.