It’s the first competition for the new club, which is part of Northeastern’s Students for Exploration and Development of Space.
Dust on the moon is finer than sand but can be as sharp as glass, says Northeastern University Lunabotics Project Lead Matthew Geisel.
That type of terrain is not ideal for long-term settlements for humans, a goal NASA hopes to make a reality through its Artemis campaign.
“If you’ve ever seen a rocket launch with all the dust going everywhere, the same thing happens on the moon, except there is no air and there’s less gravity. You can imagine very small shards of glass being scattered. If you have a person or moonbase in front of those tiny shards of glass, they are not going to have a fun time,” says Geisal, a third-year electrical engineering student.
One of the best ways to protect against debris is to build mounds — called berms — composed of lunar dust alongside these settlements, Geisal explains. Lunar robots, which can withstand the moon’s conditions, will be key to their construction.
Northeastern’s Lunabotics team will show off its lunar robot this month as it competes in the Iowa State Collegiate Space Mining Competition. It’s the club’s first competition since launching in September. The competition will take place May 21 to May 24
The robot weighs 31 pounds, features four wheels, a Raspberry Pi computer and a range of different sensors, Geisal says, including lidar sensors and Ultra Wide Band (UWB) sensors for navigation.
To counteract the difficulties of driving on the moon’s sandy terrain, the robot has a rocker system that allows for four wheels to be on the ground at all times, even on uneven surfaces.
For the competition, the team will place its robot in a simulated field that mimics the surface of the moon and have it navigate the challenging terrain and build a berm. The robot will have two runs to perform these tasks.
Northeastern’s Lunabotics team was formed last fall to help expand the reach of the university’s chapter of the Students for Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS), says Geisal, who is also the team lead of Northeastern’s Mars Rover Team.
Even though the team is young, it was able to come together quickly to develop a working robot. Next year, the team hopes to participate in NASA’s Lunabotics program, its university-level competition in which students design and build their own lunar robots.
“It’s been very exciting to see the robot emerge from nothing,” says Geisel. “And it will be more exciting to see what the [Iowa] competition is all about. … Everything we’ve developed is in the abstract, but once we’re actually there it will be really satisfying to see all the work we’ve put in the past year really pay off.”