A percussive digging system has been demonstrated to decrease the amount of downforce needed to penetrate a given soil, thus reducing the required reaction loads and robot mass. Preliminary testing of a percussive digging system in compacted lunar regolith simulant, JSC-1A, has demonstrated a 15x (fifteen times) reduction in the downforce necessary to penetrate the regolith. Downforce reductions of this magnitude are sufficient to enable robotic exploration system architectures that would not otherwise be feasible.
Percussive digging systems for robotic exploration and excavation of planetary and lunar regolith
2009-03-01
1394038 byte
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
Percussive Digging Systems for Planetary Research
Online Contents | 2010
|Percussive digging systems for planetary research
IEEE | 2010
|A Review of Lunar Regolith Excavation Robotic Device Prototypes
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2011
|Lunar Regolith Excavation Student Competition Design
NTRS | 2009
|