Robotics

Introduction

The project we were working on for robotics was the lunar soil collector. This was where we tried to make and program a robot that could go from the lunar base and collect regolith and then go back to the base so they can do tests on the regolith. And since we obviously can't build real ships the size of an SUV we are using legos! and instead of regolith, we are using very fine and powdery sand that ended up EVERYWHERE. One problem we ran into with the sand and legos was that the tires of the bots were slipping on the sand so before every single one, we had to sweep up all the sand from the last robot.

Lunar Rovers

  • There were 3 flight vehicles built and 7 test training units.

  • The LRV (lunar space rover) is 10 feet 2 inches and has a tread width of 6 feet.

  • Two 36-volt batteries were used as a power source for the ships meaning that there was a total of 72-volts were used as the rover's power.

  • They cant use salt or pepper in the space station unless it is in liquid form because each grain will just float and get into the gear and electrical.

Our Lunar Rover

This is our robot collecting sand to bring back to the "lunar base.". The two problems we had to solve were #1 We originally were gonna make our storage bucket on top of the EV3 brick but the sand was getting on the EV3 and all over the buttons which was not good for it so I came up with the idea of putting the bucket on the back and extending the scoop to be designed to go over the brick. The 2nd problem we had was that our scoop was too heavy for the motors so we replaced a few Clippy things with axels because they are lighter then we changed from a seven-hole bar to a five-hole one and it was the perfect size for our motors and it still to heavy sometimes but only if there was too much sand in it so we changed the code and it worked perfectly.

Lunar Regolith

You may be wondering what lunar regolith is well a simple way to put it would be moon dirt. Lunar regolith is made up of Breccia and rok fragments from nearby bedrock also some regolith has ice on it which was likely put there by comets, it is mainly in the permanent shadowed part of the moon because it is much colder in those areas. The lunar regolith on the moon has been forming over the last 4.6 billion years from large and small meteors. And in the lunar regolith, there is glass that was made from the heat of asteroids or meteors hitting the moon and melting any sand or rocks that were already there causing there to be hundreds of samples of glass in just a few grams of regolith.

Other Websites to check out

-This is the website I got all of my information about the moon and lunar regolith from.

-This is the website I got most of my information about the LRVs and other vehicles.