LunAlaska mining robot: first full-up test run
Channel: Orion Lawlor
Date: 30/04/2013

The first fully integrated test run of the LunAlaska lunar mining robot, in our LunArena test area.  Shot today in the clouds of dust!

The conveyor is fully functional, but we only have the left side dust storage and flingers running.  The dust flingers have only 10-20% of the fingers they need for full speed operation, and there's an interference issue causing spatter instead of unloading material, so most of our dust is just falling through the robot.

The conveyor and dust storage linear actuators are only running at 12V (along with the wheels), which is why it takes so long to raise and lower them.  The conveyor motor and flingers are hardwired to 24V and run continuously; for the real contest we'll control them via a relay or a fourth SaberTooth.

The control laptop is hastily duct-taped onto the right side of the robot, lid closed and bagged but still running.  Noah just SSH'd into the onboard laptop, and ran his ncurses control program; this control scheme would actually work fine for the full contest, although we're hoping to get autonomous operation too.  We're using a total of three sabertooth 2x25 motor controllers: two for the four drive wheels (one motor per channel) and a third for the linear actuators moving the conveyor and dump bin.

We only collected about two kilograms of dust on this run, but with fully operational flingers the conveyor can deliver many times this amount.  The contest starts May 20!
 http://www.lunalaska.org/