PRE2019 3 Group3

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.

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.

SotA

Navigation and movement

Papers that might be interesting: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/4982555 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/262427/citations#citations https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/5980489

Zeph

Finn

Nick

Rik