Driving on the Moon for the first time has got to be an exhilarating experience. But driving the same path on the Moon for the 500th time probably won’t be nearly as exciting to whatever poor astronaut got stuck with that duty for the day. With that in mind, a team of researchers led by PhD student Alec Krawciw and Professor Tim Barfoot of the University of Toronto are working on a way to automate the mundane task of driving goods back and forth from a lunar landing site to a nascent lunar exploration base.
Transporting cargo is necessary for any lunar colonization scenario, but there is one particular use case that will be critical, especially in the early years of the program - transporting goods from a landing rocket to the habitat. That’s because the rocket landing pad and the habitat itself will have to be built relatively far apart from each other - about 5 km is the best estimate currently. This is in part due to the need for a large flat area to have the rocket land on vs the need for a habitat to be protected from the intense radiation on the lunar surface. But also because of the damage shrapnel from the rocket's landing can do to any early-stage habitat.
Still, each of those rocket landings will mean more supplies for the base, assuming they can get them there. There are several groups working on cargo transportation systems for the Moon, and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is one of them. Its Lunar Exploration Light Rover (LELR) is designed to be a multi-use vehicle for general lunar exploration, but in at least one of its configurations it can be used as a cargo transport.
Isaac Arthur looks at how to change the the Moon into an industrial powerhouse. Credit - Isaac Arthur YouTube ChannelBut having someone pilot a LELR back and forth over the 5km journey repeatedly is both a waste of time for a highly trained astronaut, but also potentially dangerous both in terms of the external lunar conditions and the potential for mechanical issues along the way. So wouldn’t it be better if the LELR could just drive itself to the site, load up on the necessary cargo to transport, and bring it back to habitat?
That’s the idea behind what Mr. Krawciw and Dr. Barfoot are working on. They work at UT’s Robotics Institute, and are especially interested in autonomous algorithms. In particular, the one they are adapting for use in the LELR is a type of “teach-and-repeat” algorithm where an astronaut would still get the thrill of completing that first drive to the habitat, but in doing so would actually be training the algorithm how to successfully navigate in that environment. After it has collected enough training data for that specific route, the LELR would then be able to operate between the hab and landing pad autonomously.
After some preliminary work getting their algorithm, which wasn’t originally developed for a space exploration context, ready for use in the LELR, the researchers got a chance to test their system out in a real-world context during a field test at Canada’s analog terrain facility in Montreal. Here, they were able to work through technical hiccups like the delay introduced by operating a rover remotely. To solve that problem, they broke each step in the journey down into smaller steps and then strung those shorter segments together.
Fraser discusses how lunar infrastructure will work.Upon successful completion of their field trial, they were then invited to integrate their software fully into the LELR rover, which will be Canada’s next big contribution to the Artemis program of lunar exploration headed by NASA. Like many research projects, there’s still a lot to learn, and while they continue to adapt the algorithm for use on the Moon, they’re also improving how it would operate elsewhere, potentially helping to improve autonomous driving more generally. Unfortunately not all of us will get that thrill of their first drive on the Moon, but we can at least be happy that we won’t have to repeat it 500 times either.
Learn More:
Phys.org / University of Toronto - Researchers' autonomous system makes it easier to transport cargo on the moon
UT - A Moon Base Will Need a Transport System
UT - NASA Wants to Move Heavy Cargo on the Moon
UT - A Maglev System On The Moon Could Make Lunar Logistics A Breeze