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Kurt W. Leucht

Publications and source records attributed to Kurt W. Leucht.

3 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

ICE-RASSOR: Intelligent Capabilities Enhanced Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot

NASA’s Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot (RASSOR) is principally designed to mine and deliver regolith for In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) processing. RASSOR’s design enables it to efficiently collect and deposit regolith, return collected material for processing, and myriad related ISRU activities. To reliably perform these operations on the lunar surface, RASSOR software and sensory systems need to be robust and maximize the information extracted from on-board sensory. Herein, we present preliminary findings from the Intelligent Capabilities Enhanced RASSOR project. We apply supervised learning using real data to estimate the soil mass collected without the need for mass flow rate monitors or other explicate sensing techniques. We also create a reduced-order simulation environment to develop autonomous trenching controllers via reinforcement learning and proto-type state estimation architectures. Our initial results suggest that excavated regolith mass can be inferred within 2.9% RMS error of full scale, and reinforcement learning for autonomous operations has learned viable trenching strategies and helped identify desirable sensing capabilities, arrangements, and considerations. Future work includes regolith mass estimation during dynamic operation, expanding our simulation to more complex environments, and transfer learning from simulation to hardware.

machine learning↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Overview of NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge Phase 1

As NASA works to extend human exploration of the solar system, a sustained presence on the Moon will be critical for developing and testing the technologies and systems needed for future missions to Mars and beyond. In situ resource utilization (ISRU)—the use of lunar materials for life support, fuel, energy, manufacturing, and construction—is necessary to limit the delivery of supplies from Earth. One of the most important of these resources is water. Water supports all life on Earth and will be critical to supporting human exploration beyond Earth. On the Moon, water is trapped in icy regolith at the lunar poles, including inside permanently dark and cold craters. Novel approaches are needed to excavate the icy regolith and transport it for processing in support of permanent human missions on the Moon. To accelerate the development of such approaches and to seek diverse ideas, NASA’s Centennial Challenges launched the Break the Ice Lunar Challenge in November 2020. Phase 1 of the challenge was focused on stimulating innovative approaches for excavating icy regolith and delivering water in extreme lunar environmental conditions. The challenge sought to incentivize solutions for maximizing water delivery while minimizing energy use and the mass of equipment required to be transported to the lunar surface. Submissions for phase 1 of the challenge were due in June 2021 and winners were announced in August 2021. This paper provides details about the execution of the challenge, solutions received, criteria used to select winning solutions, and status of the phase 2 of the challenge.

Naveen Vetcha↗