file.pdf (374.95 kB)
A Sensor Arm for Robotic Antarctic Meteorite Search
journal contribution
posted on 2001-01-01, 00:00 authored by Chris Urmson, Ben Shamah, James P. Teza, Michael D. Wagner, Dimitrios Apostolopoulos, William WhittakerIn January 2000 the Nomad robot searched an area of blue ice in Antarctica and autonomously classified 5 in-situ
meteorites. The robotic capabilities of search and target identification, coupled with the scientific capabilities of analysis and
classification of rocks in an extreme environment were made possible by the integration of many different technologies for
both hardware and software. This paper focuses on the development and integration of the sensor arm used to deploy a spectrometer
from a multi-meter scale robot to centimeter scale rocks. The sensor arm combines off the shelf hardware for motion
control, actuation, and sensing. Available techniques were applied in the areas of kinematics, visual servoing and image segmentation.
The successful demonstration of the robotic search for Antarctic meteorites serves as a benchmark for the advancement
of both custom designed and off the shelf robotic technologies.