PRE2019 3 Group3

Finn, Nick, Rik, Stefan & Zeph

Group Members

Name ID

Finn Ruijters 1382888

Nick Jeurissen 1368737

Rik Dekker 1361945

Stefan van der Heijden 0910541

Zeph Ruijters 1239033

Problem Statement

One of the most important aspects of a space colony would be self-sustainability. Supplying a colony through space would be too expensive and resource heavy to sustain. This is why, in order to keep the colony up and running and be able to expand the colony it needs a way to collect materials and minerals. For this purpose we would like to research the possibilities for an autonomous mining robot that will search, collect and transport these materials and minerals for the colony. It needs to be able to navigate and move through the unknown lands of another planet, locate and mine the necessary materials and transport these back to the colony. For each task we need to research different possibilities and look for the best solution available.

Users

The users of these autonomous mining robots will be the space colony. This colony will entrust these robots with gathering materials for their building and renovation needs.

The secondary users are the engineers that may have to repair mining robots.

Objectives

The autonomous robot needs certain capabilities in order to function. These capabilities can be divided in:

- Navigation and movement

- Locating and mining materials

- Transporting materials

It also needs to have power in order to do these things.

In order to create such an autonomous mining robot all these capabilities need to be researched and should conclude in a solid solution to carry out these functions. Different possibilities for each capability should be analyzed and compared in order to gain the best inside.

Milestones

Week 1: Decided on a subject for the project.

Week 2: Created a plan and each group member has done the necessary research on its chosen objective.

Week 3: Implement findings of research into wiki.

Week 4: Experiment chosen.

Week 5: Experiment done.

Week 6:

Week 7: Finish research, design and wiki.

Week 8: Finish presentation.

Deliverables

- Research on autonomous mining robots.

- Suggestions for a (best) solution for each objective.

- Presentation.

Who will do what?

First each group members will decide on an objective to focus on for the project.

- Finn:

- Nick:

- Rik:

- Stefan:

- Zeph:

Then each group members has to read and summarize 5 relevant papers of their chosen objective.

Then each group member shall report their general findings on the wiki.

Then the group has to decide on an experiment and execute that experiment.

Then everyone implements the findings into the wiki and finalizes their chosen subject.

Finally, everyone works on the presentation.

Planning

Week 1: Decided on a subject for the project.

Week 2: Work on plan and finish research.

Week 3: Implement findings of research into wiki.

Week 4: Choose experiment and execute experiment.

Week 5: Implement findings of experiment.

Week 6: Work on wiki.

Week 7: Work on wiki.

Week 8: Finish presentation.

SotA

General

https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/military-robots/nasa-training-swarmie-robots-for-space-mining NASA plans to use multiple mining robots together in order to supply a colony with materials. These robots should work together in a "swarm". They will work individual first, but when one robot finds something interesting it will call the other robots in order to help it with extraction.

https://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/centers/kennedy/technology/nasarmc.html Competition for students to build mining robots. Maybe a good place for inspiration.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/262427/citations#citations Maybe interesting. Not looked at yet.

Navigation and movement

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224471764_Planning_Smooth_and_Obstacle-Avoiding_B-Spline_Paths_for_Autonomous_Mining_Vehicles This paper is focused on underground mining. Uses four-wheel vehicles that minimizes curvature variation in the path it takes and stays in a certain safety margin from the mine walls. It presents a study that uses a B-spline for path determination. A B-spline (or basis spline) is a spline function. This means that the function can be reconstructed by connecting different polynomials. All possible spline functions can be reconstructed by connecting different B-spline functions.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331430392_Autonomous_Navigation_and_Mapping_in_Underground_Mines_Using_Aerial_Robots The focus of this paper lies on aerial robots in an underground mine. These aerial drones use both visual and thermal cameras to ensure a good understanding of the surroundings in order to map in these dark, dust-filled areas.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259275285_Terrain_estimation_for_high-speed_rough-terrain_autonomous_vehicle_navigation This paper describes a framework for terrain characterization and indentification. This framework is composed of vision-based classification of upcoming terrain, terrain parameter identification via wheel-terrain interaction analysis and acoustic wheel-terrain contact signatures based terrain classification.

Locating and mining materials

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/5980489 While not about robots, this paper presents the method of using a detailed world model of the geological structure of the ground in order to locate different ores in the ground. It uses different sensors across the mining area, which could be placed on a robot which moves around, in combination with a supervised learning algorithm to build this world model. ~Might be interesting. No access to full paper yet however.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard_Murphy6/publication/242766226_On_the_development_of_a_hyperspectral_library_for_autonomous_mining_systems/links/00b7d52719667b35be000000.pdf This paper describes methods to build the spectral library to map geology on minefaces. The library includes multiple environmental conditions such as the inclusion of shade and moisture. Such a spectral library can be used by autonomous mining robots to identify different materials.

Transporting materials

[[1]]. June 26, 1951 R. w. GAUSMANN APPARATUS FOR TRANSPORTING MATERIALS 5 Sheets-Sheet 1. Is about a technique for for transporting materials without changing the compounds temperature which may be necessary to prevent chemical changes in the material being transported, or to prevent it from solidifying within the car whereupon it would have to be heated to be removed therefrom.