McGill’s LunarEx Team
The McGill Lunar Excavator Team (lunarex.mcgill.ca) is a group of undergraduate engineering students collaborating to construct a fully automated lunar excavator. We are designing and building the excavator to compete in NASA’s 2011 Lunabotics Mining Competition at the Astronaut Hall of Fame Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The team is composed of students from different branches of engineering and includes mechanical, electrical and software engineers. With this diverse mix of students, we have both the wealth of ideas and the engineering know-how to find novel and creative solutions to the challenge.
Students involved in the project will largely be volunteering their time. However, certain portions of the project will be completed as accredited design projects within the Faculty of Engineering at McGill University.
The Lunabotics Mining Competition and McGill
The Lunabotics Mining Competition is run by NASA to inspire interest and innovation in space exploration operations. This challenge promotes the advancement of lunar regolith (surface sand) excavation as the first step towards the utilization of the Moon’s resources. It is based on the former Regolith Excavation Challenge, one of NASA’s Centennial Challenges. The competition involves the design and construction of a mobile, remotely controlled or fully autonomous excavating machine that must collect at least 10 kg of simulated lunar regolith over a period of 15 minutes and deposit it in a specified location. It must weigh less than 80 kg when empty. In order to mirror real-life expectations in the lunar environment, power use is limited: the device must be self powered, run at a maximum of 40 volts and no part of the circuit should experience over 15 amperes. The machine will be placed in a random starting location and have to navigate around obstacles and craters. Therefore, effective sensors and efficient control logic are essential to the success of our design, and will require extensive multi-disciplinary cooperation. Any team that manages to meet these guidelines is eligible to win.
McGill University has a history of participating in advanced design projects, such as the Space Elevator and the Formula SAE.
With members on the team from these backgrounds, the McGill Lunar Excavator Team has a solid foundation that will make it a strong competitor.
Experience Gained
Students taking part in the team learn a great deal of practical engineering skills. They are faced with the challenging task of applying the theoretical knowledge acquired from the multitude of courses at the University, as well as acquiring new hands-on knowledge in fields sometimes far removed from their main area of study. It is a constant learning experience from day one of joining the team. The old team members as well as the new all have to constantly learn new skills. Because the project is multifaceted, it takes a variety of people with different skill sets to successfully produce a working design and physical product.
The novice apprentices, as we call them, come from many scientific backgrounds such as Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mining, and Physics and Math. The team also encourages people from Finance and Management to join since there is a great deal of industry collaboration and public relations work related to the project.
While in the team, every person chooses different design tasks and learns the tools needed to complete the task. They range from refined machining skills, programming, electrical hardware integration, functional robotic systems integration, and even learning good public relations for contact with industry and academia
