High launch costs and mission requirements drive the need for low mass excavators with mobility platforms, which in turn have little traction and excavation reaction capacity in low gravity environments. This presents the need for precursor and long term future missions with low mass robotic mining technology to perform In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) tasks. This paper discusses a series of experiments that investigate the effectiveness of a percussive digging device to reduce excavation loads and thereby the mass of the excavator itself. A percussive mechanism and 30" wide pivoting bucket were attached at the end of the arm simulating a basic backhoe with a percussion direction tangent to the direction of movement. Impact energies from 13.6J to 30.5J and frequencies from 0 BPM to 700 BPM were investigated. A reduction in excavation force of as much as 50% was achieved in this experimental investigation.


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Reducing Extra-Terrestrial Excavation Forces with Percussion


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    2013 IEEE Aerospace Conference ; 2013 ; Big Sky, MT, United States


    Publication date :

    2012-01-01


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




    Reducing extra-terrestrial excavation forces with percussion

    Mueller, Robert / Schuler, Jason / Smith, Jonathan Drew et al. | IEEE | 2013



    Investigating the Effects of Percussion on Excavation Forces

    Green, Alex / Zacny, Kris / Pestana, Juan et al. | ASCE | 2012



    Extra-Terrestrial Relays

    Williamson, Mark | Online Contents | 2005