Capabilities required to apply lunar regolith excavators terrestrially

Advances in the mining industry could be spurred on by work in space mining technologies. This paper discusses one such synergy. The chosen space mining technology is the robotic lunar regolith excavators produced by the NASA Lunabotics Competition. Recent work explored potential terrestrial applications of such a technology, and recognized that applications requiring high flexibility and low throughput to be its niche. This paper furthers the work by looking at capabilities the technology needs to be feasible in the terrestrial mining industry. A panel of industry experts (mining and / or robotics) was consulted in two rounds of electronic questionnaires. The resulting technical capabilities categories were power, maneuverability, operability, maintenance, robustness, and integration with a system. There were no consensus on the relative importance of the capabilities, and it is suggested that they are all developed until the applications are refined.