Lunabotics Student Paper Award: The University of Alabama MOLE System

Abstract

The resources on Earth are diminishing while the global population continues to increase. As we move into the future, space resources and colonization will provide a path for the survival and well being of the human race and our home planet. A sustainable robotic network could access, process, transport, and utilize the solar system's resources for mankind's benefit. The moon is an ideal target for developing and implementing the technologies needed for these tasks. Specifically, excavation will hold a key role for lunar missions and is the first step to utilizing the resources found on the moon. While excavation will play an important part in lunar missions, there will still be many other tasks that would benefit from robotic assistance. An excavator might not be as well suited for these tasks as other types of robots. For example a lightweight rover would do well with reconnaissance, and a mobile gripper arm could be fit for manipulation, while an excavator would be comparatively clumsy and slow in both cases. Even within the realm of excavation it would be beneficial to have different types of excavators for different tasks, as there are on Earth.The University of Alabama Lunabotics team has made it their goal to design and build a robot that could not only compete in the NASA Lunabotics Mining Competition, but could also be a multipurpose tool for future NASA missions. The resulting system is called the Modular Omnidirectional Lunar Explorer (MOLE). Using the Systems Engineering process and three years of Lunabotics experience, the 2013 Alabama Lunabotics team, the Lunar Tide, has optimized the MOLE system to compete in the 2013 Lunabotics Mining Competition.