Excavation in Space: A Survey of Automation Technologies

There is a real and driving need to integrate the disparate automation technologies in excavation for space mining. This paper describes the mining process on Earth as would be applied on another planetary body. Current technologies, commercial and research, are evaluated for their ability to autonomously carryout a task integrate with other tasks. A synthesized conceptual system design is considered to demonstrate the interactions between tasks. One task in specific, initial surveying, is examined in simulation and discussed. Finally, direction for future research to realize such an autonomous mining system is outlined.