Lunar Excavation Robots

Paul's Robotics learned about the NASA Regolith Excavation Challenge through one of Paul's high school teachers. The first year of the challenge, which offers a half-million dollar prize, had only a handful of competitors and no winner.

The team came into the game late, only a few months before the event, but worked hard to field a solid and unique entry. Despite a colossal effort, the team was unable to complete a competition run at the tournament. However, due the the challenging setup of the field, no other competitors were able to successfully excavate regolith.

With a drastically different strategy, the team worked on a new entry for the next year's challenge with high hopes for a successful competition experience. After months of hardwork, Moonraker 2.0 and the Paul's Robotics team walked away with first place and the $500,000 prize!

Moonraker 2.0

Most recent competition: NASA Regolith Excavation Challenge 2009
Weight: 75.6 kg
Strategy: Ability to dig and hold mass quantities of regolith within the robot, requiring minimal moves to the collector.
Coolest Moment: Multiple people coming into the control room while we drove saying "how are you doing that? do you have predictive technology or something?"

Oh yeah, and winning!

Moonraker 1.0

Most recent competition: NASA Regolith Excavation Challenge 2008
Weight: 35 lbs
Strategy: Autonomously navigate to the center of the box, over any rocks, and stay there for the remainder of the time. Collect regolith through a rotating arm that continually dumps onto moving conveyors. Conveyors stay aimed at the collector to move the constant flow of regolith.
Coolest Moment: Finding a drastically different way to view and attempt to solve the challenge