Productive Lightweight Robotic Excavation for the Moon and Mars
Publication: Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 27, Issue 4
Abstract
Exploration of the Moon and Mars calls for robots that are increasingly capable in regolith, or granular soil. Beyond traversing and avoiding entrapment, future robots will excavate and process regolith as a resource. This work distinguishes concerns governing the performance of regolith operations, based on load-haul-dump tasks motivated by in situ resource utilization and lunar outpost site work. Payload ratio (mass of regolith payload capacity normalized by robot mass) and driving speed are identified as key parameters governing the productivity of small site work robots. Other parameters, such as number of wheels, are not as important. Experiments with a small robotic excavator and task-level simulations (for which a modeling framework is described) determine the relative sensitivity of productivity to changes in these variables. These findings provide direction for the development of future lightweight robotic excavators.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 27 • Issue 4 • July 2014
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 10, 2012
Accepted: Mar 11, 2013
Published online: Mar 13, 2013
Published in print: Jul 1, 2014
Discussion open until: Sep 11, 2014
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