NASA Robotic Mining Competition 2023-2024
NYU Tandon School of Engineering participates in the yearly NASA Robotic Mining Competition with its Robotic Design Team. For the year 2023-2024, the main objective shifted from excavation and regolith analysis to berm construction for habitat and protection, the competition took place at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, FL. The change in objective goes hand in hand with NASA’s Artemis advancement program, as they prepare to land humans on the Moon, the most needed technology is that which can create berms for both habitat and protection of meteorites and radiation.
For the 2023-2024 competition, I was the chief design engineer of the robot. This meant leading the development of the excavation, locomotion, storage, and chassis design. In addition, I took on the responsibilities of a system engineer and project manager, where I would determine the robot system requirements, set timelines, and organize the entire mechanical team to set collective and individual goals.
The main objective of NYU's Robotic Design Team robot for the 2023-2024 competition was to transport the most amount of material possible during one single run given the size constraints provided by NASA - 1.1m long, 0.6m wide, and 0.6m height - while decreasing the points of failure and systems required to do so. This came as no small feat, as NASA provided around 7 months from when they published the competition guidelines to the actual competition, which means that we had a very limited amount of time to come up with an efficient, reliable, and most importantly innovative design, to then have enough time for testing, iterating, manufacturing and integration with electrical and computer science sub-teams.
After months of hard work, teamwork, and a lot of creative breakthroughs, this was the design that competed in the NASAs 2023-2024 RMC competition.
As mentioned before for the 2023-2024 season, we decided to create a system that was able to transport as much regolith as possible. To achieve that we combined a conveyor belt excavation and deployment system with a linear actuated scissor-lift system for collection, storage, and regolith deployment.
This design allowed us to work around one of the biggest restrictions of the robot, size. By integrating the collection-storage-deployment system into one, with only three moving components - linear actuators, and servo motor - and repurposing the conveyor belt to function both as an excavation and deployment system we managed to decrease the complexity, increasing the space for regolith collection and decrease the weight of the robot.
The conveyor belt system - excavation and deployment system - was designed to pivot around a point on the front of the robot, this allowed us to store the conveyor belt to meet the size requirements and then deploy it with a large range of motion and volume collection potential. The conveyor belt system was designed to be functional in both directions, which meant that it had buckets facing both directions, when spun anti-clockwise, the conveyor belt would digg material and transport it to the storage location, when spun clockwise, the conveyor belt would transport the material out of the storage location into the intended area in the arena.
On the other hand, a scissor lift mechanic was chosen due to the high loads that the collection-storage-deployment bin would encounter when fully loaded. This still allowed us to store the system tightly to meet the initial size constraints but then provided a large range of motion and force that could be used to achieve the system's three objectives. When the bin was used for storage, the linear actuators were completely retracted and the bin had a slight downward slope that would hold the material carried by the conveyor belt. When translating the linear would either stay in place or slightly raise to shift the weight of the material and balance the robot, and when deploying, the linear actuators would fully extend and let the regolith fall onto the conveyor belt system which would then carry the material to the intended location in the arena.
Lastly the locomotion system was also completely redesigned. As the competition takes place in a simulated lunar environment, which is a granular material similar to sand, one of the largest challenges is to get enough traction to be able to maneuver around the course. You require a design that is able to grip into the surface, not generate too much resistance, is rugged enough to go over mounts and holes, and is agile enough for tight turning.
In order to comply with those requirements we significantly increased the size of our wheel, giving us a larger contact area with the sand, while also resulting in a much more capable system to go over the obstacles on the course. Nonetheless increase size is not enough, as you also need to grab to the material, for this we took inspiration from the water wheel, we needed a large surface area to create a reaction force with the sand, therefore needing a fraction of the wheel to sink into the ground, the blades of a water mill structure allowed us to do that, while the side wall prevented the material from dispersing and therefore decreasing our reaction force.
In addition to the redesigning of the wheel, we also redesign the way the power was transmitted from the chassis to the wheel. By 3D printing a tailored case, that would bolt on directly onto the motor and then clamp and bolt directly on to the beam, resulted in a rigid connection and a very smooth force transition that gave us significant mobility and speed.
The theory of operation of the robot would be the following. The robot would be measured before entering the arena in order to ensure it would fit in the cargo bay of a space rocket. Once in the arena, the locomotion system - using computer vision and autonomous decisions - would take us to the intended digging location, then the conveyor belt would pivot and start turning anti-clockwise to collect the material, the linear actuators of the bin would completely retract and the material would flow from the conveyor belt to the bin. Once the bin was completely full, the conveyor belt would pivot and store again - for balance and handling characteristics - and the robot would translate to the new intended regolith deployment location - the conveyor belt would pivot once more to a horizontal orientation and then the linear actuators from the bin would extend and allow the material to flow down to the conveyor belt, which would be rotating clockwise and depositing the regolith in the arena.
The robot was almost a complete success, at the competition, when the robot was excavating, the small servo motor that would hinge a platform to bridge the gap between the conveyor belt and the deposition bin did not activate, which then prevented the regolith from reaching the deposition bin, this was for sure disappointing but this is part of engineering and does not only happen in student lead projects but in real life, the important part is to recognize the failure point and either improve redundancy or eliminate it for next time!
Even with the small issue during the competition, the robot went on to win first place in the most innovative student-led project at NYU. The project generated so much recognition that the Dean of NYU, Andrew D Hamilton, came to the team to learn more about it. Finally, the robot received praise from NASA engineers for its simple and efficient design, and we were recognized with the Leaps and Bounds award for our great detail and design process on the system engineering paper.
Bellow you can find both the proof of life video sent to NASA in early March and the NASA competition live stream from May.
At NYU Robotic Design Team we do not shy away from challenges, as you might have seen, many components are 3D printed, including the chassis connectors, the wheels, and even the conveyor belt pulleys! This is because we work with a low budget and do not have access to welding or access to more complex manufacturing techniques like injection molding and machining. Nonetheless, it brings me a lot of pride that we faced this challenge head-on, saw what we had available, made all the calculations required made sure that the manufacturing technique would work, and produced a competitive robot that was greatly received and highly praised by NYU and NASA engineers.
The first video is the proof of life vide that we send to NASA two month prior to the competition, to prove that all the subsystems were operational. It was a great success as we were able to show every functionality of the robot.
The second is the video from the NASA competition. Please advance to time 8:20:17.
Even though there were some components that failed before or during operation, we left very happy with the positivie feedback on the design and prices won at both NYU and NASA, and with a very clear plan on how to improve the entire robot.
Thank you for reading,
Please reach out if you liked the project, more about me and my contact information is in my About me section on the top right!
