Robotic and Human-tended Collaborative Drilling Automation for Subsurface Exploration

Robotic devices and humans interact with each other and themselves at differing levels of collective responsibility. Future space exploration requires both robotic and human components, in complementary roles. Future in-situ lunar/martian resource utilization and characterization, as well as the scientific search for life on Mars, will require access to the subsurface and hence drilling. Drilling on Earth is complex – an art form more than an engineering discipline. Human operators listen to and feel drill string vibrations coming from kilometers underground. Abundant mass and energy make it possible for terrestrial drilling to employ brute-force approaches to failure recovery and system performance issues. Space drilling will require intelligent and autonomous systems for robotic exploration and to support human exploration. This paper examines a modular, structured approach to human-robotic coordination, and shows how middleware and contingent plans are used in two examples that were field-tested at planetary-analog exploration sites in 2005.