The ISRU Pilot Excavator (IPEx) is a Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) Game Changing Development (GCD) project to develop a robotic excavator to demonstrate excavation of up to 10 metric tons of lunar regolith. IPEx is based on the Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot (RASSOR) excavator developed at NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and utilizes a counter rotating bucket drum concept to balance excavation forces for use on reduced gravity planetary bodies. To take advantage of the counter rotating bucket drum mechanism, work is being done to develop new autonomous excavation strategies and algorithms. Referred to as “Auto-dig”, these algorithms will allow IPEx to excavate, drive, and deliver its target mass of 10 metric tons of lunar regolith during an 11-day mission semi-autonomously. Due to bandwidth and latency constraints teleoperation will be kept to a minimum, with operators periodically confirming and verifying the excavator’s high-level tasks and operations. While the work to develop optimized autodig solutions is ongoing at KSC, early tests have yielded interesting results that have led to the discovery of additional risks that need to be mitigated in autonomous excavation. Testing has also encouraged the development of new software and visualization tools that provide real-time insight into excavation loads during operation, allowing faster development and helping build better intuition to the excavation process. These tools will help in the pursuit to develop fully optimized digging algorithms that are robust enough to handle hazards such as rocks or irregular terrain.


    Zugriff

    Zugriff über TIB

    Verfügbarkeit in meiner Bibliothek prüfen


    Exportieren, teilen und zitieren



    Titel :

    ISRU Pilot Excavator - Development of Autonomous Excavation Algorithms


    Beteiligte:
    B. C. Buckles (Autor:in) / J. M. Schuler (Autor:in) / A. J. Nick (Autor:in) / J. D. Smith (Autor:in) / T. J. Muller (Autor:in)

    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2022


    Format / Umfang :

    2 pages


    Medientyp :

    Report


    Format :

    Keine Angabe


    Sprache :

    Englisch




    ISRU Pilot Excavator - Development of Autonomous Excavation Algorithms

    B. C. Buckles / J. M. Schuler / A. J. Nick et al. | NTRS


    ISRU Pilot Excavator: Bucket Drum Scaling Experimental Results

    Jason Michael Schuler / Andrew J Nick / Jonathan Drew Smith et al. | NTRS


    ISRU Pilot Excavator: Bucket Drum Scaling Experimental Results

    Jason Schuler / Andrew Nick / Kurt Leucht et al. | NTRS


    ISRU Pilot Excavator: Bucket Drum Scaling Experimental Results

    Schuler, Jason / Nick, Andrew / Leucht, Kurt et al. | ASCE | 2023


    ISRU Pilot Excavator Wheel Testing in Lunar Regolith Simulant

    Liz Zhang / Jason Schuler / Adam Dokos et al. | NTRS