Mechanism Design of an Extraterrestrial Regolith-boring Robot

Abstract

Penetrating planetary subsurface regolith is extremely significant to explore the secrets insight extraterrestrial planets. The concept considerations and mechanism design of a planetary regolith-boring robot were proposed in this work. The robot has two degrees of freedom, including a rotational cutting head to break regolith and a penetration mechanism to move the robot along the drilled borehole. The serrated cutters are designed on the cutter head to improve the adaptability of regolith with different strengths, and high-pressure pneumatic gas is utilized to remove drilled cuttings. The penetration mechanism relies on the friction force with the borehole to provide torque balance generated by the rotational cutting movement and achieve downward penetration.