Portrait of Lunar Rover for Polar Crater Exploration
Head: David Wettergreen
Contact: David Wettergreen
Associated Lab: Field Robotics Center (FRC)
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Last Project Publication Year: 2012

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.

Displaying 7 Publications
Conference Paper, Proceedings of (IROS) IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 5065 - 5070, October, 2012
Conference Paper, Proceedings of Earth and Space Conference, pp. 495 - 504, April, 2012
Conference Paper, Proceedings of Earth and Space Conference, pp. 250 - 255, April, 2012
Conference Paper, Proceedings of 17th International Society for Terrain-Vehicle Systems Conference (ISTVS '11), November, 2011
Conference Paper, Proceedings of IEEE Aerospace Conference, March, 2011
David Wettergreen, Dominic Jonak, David Kohanbash, Scott Jared Moreland, Spencer Spiker, and James Teza
Conference Paper, Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Field and Service Robotics (FSR '09), pp. 489 - 498, July, 2009
Conference Paper, Proceedings of 9th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space (iSAIRAS '08), February, 2008

Current RI People

Past Project People

  • John P Thornton
  • Dominic Jonak
  • Spencer Spiker
  • Scott Jared Moreland