Lunabotics Challenge (NASA Robotic Mining Competition), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Washington, D.C., USA

This is our second and final competition run for the 2013 NASA Robotic Mining Competition. Based on observations from our first run, we made some significant changes to our robot that are not very visually apparent. First, Due to the wall climbing incident that prevented us from depositing minimum required mined material into the collection bin, we relocated our rear axles to prevent contact between the tires and the back wall of the arena. Second, limit switches were added to the bottom back corners of the robot that gave immediate feedback to the pilots whenever the robot came into contact with the wall. Having these limit switches allowed us to confirm that the robot had docked with the collection bin without manually looking at the visual feedback given by the NASA competition officials. A third limit switch was also added to the underside of our electronics housing box to detect when the mining conveyor was not moving due to it trying to take too big of a bite out of the ground. Our mining conveyor was attached on a six inch stroke linear actuator which allowed us to adjust the mining height while mining mode was engaged. By monitoring the frequency of the scoops passing by the limit switch, we were able to have the onboard arduino atMega automatically raise and lower the conveyor to prevent jams and increase our mining efficiency.

This video contains the half of our second run where we made one complete successful mining and depositing cycle. During the second half of this run, we made another successful mining cycle, but were unable to return back to the collection bin due to time constraints and a malfunction that caused us to have to remotely reboot the robot.

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This video is from the 2014 NASA Robotic Mining Competition. The footage came from on-board our robot during the first competition attempt by using a GO-PRO that was passively recording. Although the there was not a very good place to put the camera, we did find a place that gave us a view of the left side front wheel as it deploys and the left side of the mining head as it is in mining position.

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This video is from the 2014 NASA Robotic Mining Competition. The footage came from on-board our robot during the second competition attempt by using a GO-PRO that was passively recording. Although the there was not a very good place to put the camera, we did find a place that gave us a view of the left side front wheel as it deploys and the left side of the mining head as it is in mining position.

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An orbit view of our 2015 NASA RMC final prototype

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Our 2015 NASA Robotic Mining Competition Prototype in action!

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More than 40 college and university teams from around the U.S. used their custom-made, remote-controlled mining robots to dig in a giant arena filled with simulated Martian dirt and ice rocks at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida..

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