Design and Implementation of an Astronaut Assistive Mining Robot

Abstract

In this era of science and technology robotics is a very popular field of research. Many researchers all over the world try to implement various types of robots for using in different field instead of human. The main focus of the project is to develop a robot which is able to help astronaut indifferent planetary surface. The robot can be controlled by the command of human by the remote. Joysticks and Xbee transceiver module has been used for sending and receiving all the control signal from the remote. Video transmission has been done by mobile camera for controlling the robot by seeing the circumstances in the site. For mining and drilling a robotic arm with a driller has been used for drilling the regolith and a collector or digger has also been added for digging and collecting regolith. For storing the collected regolith main storage has been attached in the robot and actuators are used in the degrees of freedom of arm, collector and storage. This robot performs all the objectives almost satisfactorily. For using gear motors the performance of this robot is slightly slow. The robotic arm moves slowly but smoothly. The collector can collect sand and rock and can store them. It can also dump stored regolith in a specific box.