Unmanned Systems Technology 006 | ECA Inspector Mk2 USV | Antenna systems | Northwest UAV NW-44 | Unmanned ground vehicles | Navigation systems | Lunar X challenge

78 Insight | Lunar X challenge They also considered the avionics for navigating the lunar surface, including the sensors monitoring the attitude, speed and position of the craft, which also has to verify the distance it travelled. The award looked as well at how the teams would get the image back to Earth, whether there is a surface communications link to another craft or if it tries to beam the image back directly. The prize was won by Astrobotic, for its Andy rover developed with Carnegie Mellon University, and Hakuto. Handy Andy Andy weighs 33 kg and features a unique pivoting axle suspension that allows it to drive efficiently in rugged terrain. It has a wide wheel track to give more stability in dusty environments but also a high clearance to climb slopes and straddle rocks. The developers believe that the low weight of less than 5 kg it will have on the Moon, and the wide wheels, will give Andy better mobility than other rovers, while the novel suspension will provide strong pulling power in dusty environments. They have also developed a new method for combining landing imagery with 3D path reconstruction data to plan and document Andy’s exploration route, and have used software to minimise the amount of redundancy needed in the electronics while still achieving high reliability, despite the Moon’s high radiation levels. The other Mobility winner, Hakuto, is using a ‘dual rover’ approach, with its four-wheeled Moonraker rover towing a two-wheeled rover called Teris, the combination measuring just 20 x 30 cm and weighing less than 2 kg. The two are linked by a tether so that Tetris can be lowered into holes in the ground for exploration and will carry just 100 g of payload for experiments. The rover bodies use autoclave- moulded carbon fibre-reinforced plastic materials to minimise weight, while the wheels are made from a thermal insulation material to prevent the extreme heat and cold of the lunar surface – more than 100 C at noon, below -150 C at night – from being conducted to the rovers’ bodies. A hyperbolic mirror camera system on the Moonraker enables it to capture 360 º images and data from the panoramic camera, and other sensors will also be used in the simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) algorithm to identify its surrounding environment and estimate its own position. A team from Germany called the Part Time Scientists also won a Mobility prize for its design. With backing from car maker Audi, the team is developing a lander, Isaac, that will weigh about 250 kg and carry a payload of 50 kg, including a 25 kg rover called Asimov. This is a four-wheeled electrical drive design that uses a vector control system, meaning it can move easily in any direction, with no ‘front’ or ‘back’ to the rover. It is using image sensors from CMOSIS, the imaging spin-off from the University of Leuven in Belgium. Then there is the challenge of taking the photo itself. For the $250,000 Imagery milestone, the judges monitored teams as they tested the optics, image sensors, pointing mechanisms, image processing and comms, as well as how the camera would handle the very low temperatures on the Moon. Working in a vacuum Astrobotic also won this milestone with a prototype imaging subsystem, and tested optics and imaging electronics for tolerance to flight vibration and working in a vacuum. It demonstrated that the camera head could operate in a thermal vacuum and capture, compress and transmit high-definition video with the low levels of light available as well as take HD pictures, and send these back to the Griffin lander which would re- transmit them back to Earth. The other winners were the Part Time Scientists from Germany with the CMOSIS sensors, and Moon Express. The teams that won milestone February/March 2016 | Unmanned Systems Technology Team Omega Envoy’s Sagan rover has been tested in terrestrial environments that replicate the presence of lunar dust The four-wheel electrical drive design uses a vector control system that allows the rover to move easily in any direction, with no ‘front’ or ‘back’