Autonomous Team of Robots Explores the Moon at ESA-ESRIC Space Resources Challenge

Robotic Solutions for Space Exploration and Lunar Prospecting

The FZI Research Center for Information Technology was part of the ESA-ESRIC Space Resources Challenge 2022. The FZI made it to the finals with 4 other teams from Europe and Canada. The video was taken after the official run, but in the same lunar arena in Esch-al-Alzette, Luxembourg.
The goal was to show robotic solutions for exploring and prospecting for resources on the moon. Autonomous navigation is a key requirement for reliable robot usage in space exploration. Moreover, it was required to systematically analyze the ground and rocks to find potential resources like Titanium. The FZI developed a heterogenous robot team (Boston Dynamics Spot, ANYbotics ANYmal and a Clearpath Robotics Husky platform) to meet these requirements.
The robots parallelly made their way across the lunar surface while scanning and mapping the unknown environment. The two walking robots quickly mapped the whole environment and found interesting areas as well as rocks to be analyzed. The husky robot was equipped with an x-ray spectrometer, a grinder and a high-resolution camera to perform detailed analyses. ROS-based software such as the FZI’s VDB mapping was used for navigation, 3D path planning and defining the mission. A graphical user interface allowed the mission control to overview data and identify potential resources.
Watch our videos to see for yourself what solutions the FZI comes up with – to solve the key challenges of automated resource prospecting! Let us know in the comments what you think about our robot team