ESA Lunar Robotics Challenge
In late March 2008, ESA has issued an Annuncement challenging university students to develop an innovative, mobile robot capable of retrieving samples from a lunar-like crater.
In June, eight of the submitted proposals have been selected for running the final of the competition after evaluation by a team of ESA experts. The selected student teams received the go-ahead to design their robotic systems and build them to compete in the challenge event.
The proposals had to describe the design of a vehicle capable of retrieving soil samples from a crater, and an associated remote-operation workstation. The vehicles are required to weigh no more than 100 kg, consume no more than 2 kW of power, and occupy a volume of no more than 0.5 cubic metres with deployable appendages stowed.
Objectives:
The robot’s test mission includes a number of objectives:
- move from a ‘landing site’ to the rim of a lunar-like crater
- descend into the crater, negotiatingThe teams selected to proceed with the design phase, supported by funding from the ESA General Studies Programme (GSP), are: an incline of up to 40 degrees
- operate in sunlight on the crater rim, and in the dark interior of the crater
- reach the bottom of the 15 m deep crater
- locate and retrieve at least 0.1 kg of selected, visually distinctive, soil samples from the bottom of the crater
- return to the crater rim and then the ‘landing site’
Selected teams
The teams selected for the final Phase of the competition are:
- Università di Pisa, Italy
- Universität Bremen, Germany
- Jacobs University Bremen, Germany
- Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain
- Oulun Yliopisto (University of Oulu), Finland
- Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna Pisa, Italy
- Surrey Space Centre, University of Surrey, United Kingdom
- Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule - ETH) Zurich, Switzerland
For more information: www.esa.it