Skip to main content

Bosch is helping autonomous robots find electric charging stations on the moon

Electric vehicles are inching towards the mainstream in America, but they’re already the norm on the surface of the moon. While some of the robots created by NASA rely on solar panels for electricity, a group of research firms that includes Germany’s Bosch is leveraging familiar technology to help next-generation machines find charging stations.

Recommended Videos

Bosch, Astrobotic, WiBotic, and the University of Washington are developing ways to keep robots juiced up during the lunar night so that they keep continue exploring even when solar panels go to sleep. Engineers are relying on wireless charging, which is normally associated with smartphones and electric cars, and autonomous navigation. On paper, the project is simple: When their batteries are low, the robots will autonomously find a wireless charging pad.

Making this system work on our planet is easier said than done, so fine-tuning it for lunar use is more complicated than it sounds. Notably, the high-riding exploration robots will not be able to rely on GPS to find their destination.

“Navigating a robot on the moon is not the same as navigating a robotic vacuum cleaner through your home, or navigating a self-driving car on the road. Radio-based terrestrial localization solutions are not available on the moon, and the unpredictable lunar terrain and dust make it even harder to perform precise navigation using visual cues alone. Thus, we need intelligent fusion and perception on the robot’s multi-sensory data to solve this unique challenge,” Dr. Samarjit Das, Bosch’s leader of Intelligent IoT group, explained in a statement.

Astrobotic CubeRover
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Multi-sensor fusion technologies are at the core of the project. Robots will move around by analyzing video footage, inertial measurement units, radio frequency movements, and vibrations. The data gathered by these sensors will help the robots gauge the depth of a crater, for example. Bosch will work with Astrobotic’s CubeRover (shown above), which is about the size of a shoebox and weighs under five pounds, so it’s not going to be testing a monster truck of a rig with the turning radius of a Freightliner. It’s nimble, which greatly facilitates the project.

Meanwhile, the University of Washington and WiBotic will develop the wireless charger. It will be light, and it will deliver ultra-fast charging so the robots aren’t down for hours at a time. Astronauts get range anxiety, too.

NASA’s Tipping Point program is investing $5.8 million into the project, and researchers hope to demonstrate the technology halfway through 2023. If everything goes according to plan, the technology developed for this project will likely trickle into other exploration programs. Reliable autonomous robots could later ultimately parts of the moon we’ve never explored, for example, or the system could be modified to let them roam on other planets.

Ronan Glon
Ronan Glon is an American automotive and tech journalist based in southern France. As a long-time contributor to Digital…
NASA asks for the public’s help to design a robot for digging on the moon
A close-up view of the bucket drums on Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot (RASSOR) in the regolith bin inside Swamp Works at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 5, 2019.

If you're a designer or engineer who's stuck at home and bored, then NASA has a challenge for you. The agency has developed a robot for digging on the moon, called Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot or RASSOR, and it wants the public's help in designing a part of it called the bucket drum. This part collects the soil, or regolith, from the surface of the moon and stores it securely. When the regolith has been transported to its destination, the bucket drum rotates to dump the material in the required location.

Currently, the bucket drums are hollow cylinders, one at each end of RASSOR. They have scoops which pick up the regolith by pulling it toward the center of the robot, so it can collect material from both front and back. This ensures that the robot doesn't dig more at one end than the other, which would make excavating more difficult.

Read more
Scientists come up with a method to make oxygen from moon dust
Artist impression of activities in a Moon Base.

The moon is covered in fine, delicate dust called regolith which sticks to absolutely everything and causes all sorts of technical problems. But it is an abundant resource, and plans for making use of it include melting it with lasers to use for 3D printing or packing it into bricks to build habitats. Now, the European Space Agency (ESA) has come up with a different use for the tricky substance: Turning it into oxygen which could be used by lunar explorers for breathing and for the production of fuel.

Moon regolith is known to contain about 40 to 50% oxygen by weight, but it is bound in the form of oxides so it's not immediately usable. Researchers at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) have been investigating ways to extract this oxygen using a technique called molten salt electrolysis. The regolith is placed in a metal basket along with molten calcium chloride salt and heated to a high temperature, then an electric current is passed through it so the oxygen can be extracted. A bonus of this method is that it also produces usable metal alloys as a by-product.

Read more
Here’s what Bosch hopes to learn from deploying autonomous cars in San Jose
Bosch, Daimler autonomous Mercedes-Benz S-Class

The companies racing to deploy autonomous cars on the world's roads took a reality check in the 2010s, but multimillion-dollar development efforts remain ongoing across the automotive and tech industries. German supplier Bosch is notably moving full speed ahead with its quest to make driverless cars a reality. Kay Stepper, Bosch's senior vice president of automated driving, sat down with Digital Trends to talk about the state of autonomous driving in 2020, and what's next for the artificial intelligence technology that powers the prototypes it's testing.

Bosch has never made a car, so it brings its innovations to the market through partnerships with automakers. It chose Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler to test autonomous technology in real-world conditions via a ridesharing pilot program in San Jose, California, close to one of the company's research centers. Stepper explained that, while engineers learn a lot from software-based simulations, field testing is still crucial.

Read more