Viator is our first rover for the University Rover Challenge. To meet competition goals, the design has a dexterous hand with four fingers to better type, pick up objects, and more. The rocker-bogie suspension system helps keep the rover stable in uneven terrain. The design is also modular due to the life detection system being built.
Houdini is the third iteration of the excavator, dump, trunk, and tread design. This design embraces NASA Lunabotics’ new focus towards Lunar mining by reducing the size to a third of its predecessors while still being able to mine 20% deeper.
Atlas is the second iteration of the excavator, dump, trunk, and tread design. Although the design is the same as Grimlock’s, the team completely overhauled the rover with a light carbon fiber frame. Now the rover weighs in at 67 kilograms, a significant reduction to prior iterations.
Grimlock boasted a fully dynamic digging arm with four degrees of freedom, similar to a classic excavator, with a dump truck style bin that was used to transport the mined monolith region, and tank treads that could drive over any obstacle thrown at it.
Our debut into the world of extraterrestrial mining, Daybreak was a four wheeled drum digger capable of mining fifteen centimeters below the surface of the Moon. The rover featured an all-aluminum frame weighing in at 71 kilograms
