NASA Gears Up for the Regolith Rumble

eldavojohn writes "NASA is holding another scientific challenge to see which autonomous robot can move the most regolith in 30 minutes. The finer details: 'To win the cash prizes for NASA's Regolith Challenge, teams must demonstrate fully autonomous robots capable of collecting at least 330 pounds (150 kilograms) of mock Moon dirt within 30 minutes. Whichever robot moves the most regolith over the benchmark limit, while still meeting contest specifications, wins, NASA said. But in order to compete, lunar regolith excavators must weigh less than 88 pounds (40 kilograms) and run on less than 30 kilowatts of power, according to contest rules.'"

Comments

Hmm...lightweight and doesn't use much energy

[antifoidulus]

and moves a ton of dirt? Can I enter my dog? It's pretty damn autonomous.

Some info missing - how far must rock be moved?

[glawrie]

Does anyone have a link to the terms of the competition. The posting and the article it came from both omit to say how far the rock has to be moved. I'd have thought that would have a big impact on the total energy requirement. I would also hope that the spec would have a total energy consumption target (in KWh) - rewarding the more energy efficient robots.

Re:Well, which is it? lb of kg? W or kW?

[halftrack]

Wikipedia seems to disagree with you. See: article about the Pound and Avoirdupois article. It seems to have been defined as weight initially but 1 pound is now defined as exactly 453.59237 grams ... which is mass. So TFA is infact correct stating that 330 punds = 150 kg (with an error less than 0.3%).