November 20, 2009

UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

The UBC team designed and built a robot based on a Miskin Double Bucket Scraper.

University of British Columbia robotics club to help build moon base

RICHARD GILBERT

staff writer

A team of engineering and computer science students from British Columiba was the only official Canadian team in a recent U.S. competition to help build a moon base with a robotic excavator.

The University of British Columbia (UBC) Thunderbirds Robotic Club entered the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Regolith Excavator Centennial Challenge at Ames Research Air Force Base in Mountain View, Calif. last month.

In this competition, 24 teams designed and built robotic machines to excavate simulated lunar soil or regolith.

The robot driver was required to sit in a separate room, where they couldn’t see the vehicle.

“We did very well and finished off sixth in the event,” said John Meech, professor and director of the UBC Centre for Environmental Research in Minerals, Metals and Materials.

“The biggest challenge of the competition involved configuration issues with the network supplied by NASA to place a two-second delay between the moon and Earth.”

During the competition, 19 of the 24 robots were tested in a box four metres square and about half a metre deep. The box contained eight tons of regolith.

To qualify for the $500,000 prize, a robot had to be able to dig up and dump at least 150 kg of regolith into a container in 30 minutes. The remotely controlled vehicles were required to contain their own power sources and weigh no more than 176 pounds.

“We suffered by having to sacrifice 12 minutes of our digging time to establish the communication link with the NASA server,” said Meech.

The UBC team overcame another challenge, when the vision or video system failed to configure properly. The operator did the digging using a scanning laser.

“Despite these difficulties, the MoonScraper was able to dig, carry, and climb the ramp delivering three loads to the collection box to accumulate over 60 kg (the team was officially accredited with 43 kg as the final cycle exceeded the time limit),” explained Meech.

UBC was one of nine teams that dug regolith and moved it into the collector box. Only six teams excavated significant amounts.

Paul Ventimiglia, an undergraduate robotics engineering student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts, was the leader of the winning team.

Their entry dug 440 kilos and was awarded $500,000 in prize money.

The UBC team designed and built a robot based on a Miskin Double Bucket Scraper, that has one bucket that digs in one direction and then closes, while the second bucket is lowered and then scrapes the surface in the other direction.

Meech said this technology is superior for moon operation.

The scraper can dig and haul 40 kilograms in a three-minute cycle, without generating dust clouds.

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