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Lunar Rover for Polar Crater Exploration (Scarab) Head: David Wettergreen Contact: David Wettergreen (dsw@ri.cmu.edu) Mailing address: Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute 5000 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Associated center: FRC For more information, see this project's homepage.

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Project Description

The polar craters of the moon lie in permanent shadow and may hold water ice frozen in the deep cold. The Scarab rover has been designed to carry a 1-meter coring drill and a payload of science instruments that can analyze the abundance of hydrogen, oxygen and other materials. Scarab has a unique transforming chassis that allows it to lay down on the ground to stablize a drill and also to posture itself for slope ascent and descent. Onboard software controls motions and uses laser scanning technologies to autonomously perceive and navigate terrain in total darkness.

Personnel [Past Members]

	Name	Title	Email Address
	Dominic Jonak	Senior Research Programmer	dom@ri.cmu.edu
	David Kohanbash	Research Engineer	dkohanba@cs.cmu.edu
	Scott Jared Moreland	Masters Student, MechE	smoreland@cmu.edu
	James Teza	Senior Research Engineer	jpt@cs.cmu.edu
	John P Thornton	Senior Research Engineer	johnthornton@cmu.edu
	David Wettergreen	Assoc. Research Professor	dsw@ri.cmu.edu
	William Red L. Whittaker	University Professor	red@ri.cmu.edu

Publications

Note: This list may not be comprehensive. It contains only those publications in the RI publications database. Entries are listed in reverse chronological order.

• Design of the Scarab Rover for Mobility and Drilling in the Lunar Cold Traps
  P. Bartlett, D. Wettergreen, and W.L. Whittaker
  International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space, February, 2008. [Abstract]