Reducing extra-terrestrial excavation forces with percussion

High launch costs and mission requirements drive the need for low mass excavators with mobility platforms, which in turn have little traction and excavation reaction capacity in low gravity environments. This presents the need for precursor and long term future missions with low mass robotic mining technology to perform In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) tasks. This paper discusses a series of experiments that investigate the effectiveness of a percussive digging device to reduce excavation loads and thereby the mass of the excavator itself. A percussive mechanism and 30" wide pivoting bucket were attached to a test stand simulating a basic backhoe with a percussion direction tangent to the direction of movement. Impact energies from 13.6J to 30.5J and frequencies from 0 to 700 beats per minute (BPM) were investigated. A reduction in excavation force of as much as 50% was achieved in this experimental investigation.