We still can not believe it, but as it looks like we really won the first ESA Lunar Robotics Challenge!

a small pricing ceremony in the hotel. Felix had to leave earlier so he is not there ( click to enlarge )

Great thanks to everyone from the University and the DFKI who helped us. This would not be possible without your support!

Sorry to all the readers that we update our blog just now, but the new semester started last week, while we were on Tenerife, so we had to create our time-schedule, visit lectures and of course celebrated a bit... besides that we have over 2400 files of photo and video material that has to be reviewed, cutted and filtered. Of course we can (and want) to show you all the stuff we brought back but I think it is the best to show you only some selected shots.



Ok, as I said there is a lot of stuff to show you. I will skip the first days (where we already wrote something about) and start directly with photos from thursday, the day of the first night trial.

Before the night trial we had the opportunity to take a first look at the sample.

Sebastian and me observing the sample. ( click to enlarge )

Also we tried the repeater during the day:

the repeater blinking and repeating video and command signals. ( click to enlarge )

Here you can get a small impression from inside our truck. As you can see there is not that much space in it so we had to attend not to mess up the place to much, which was not easy...

Hi Mehmed! ( click to enlarge )


This is what I call organized chaos ( click to enlarge )

During the night we cover our truck with a plane that we brought from germany. Thanks to Thilo who forseight that we need one.

lets go camping. ( click to enlarge )

Time was running out. The challenge came closer and the ToDo-List growed. We filled up 3 of these charts. These todo lists are not empty now, so there is still something to do when CESAR arrives back in Bremen.

Still some "minor" things to do... ( click to enlarge )

But we made progress and so CESAR was ready for his first night trial.

CESAR is ready ( click to enlarge )

Here comes our hero. He leaves the truck for a small walk...

GO CESAR! ( click to enlarge )

...while we saw the world through his eye. And what we saw was the proof that the man in the moon exists... and he takes pictures of our CESAR.

CESAR really is a rockstar. ( click to enlarge )

Our lander-pc had a monitor that showed a live image that the operator of the robot also sees on his screen. On a real moon-mission this pc would be very small, embedded into the "lander" and without a monitor. But as time was running out I did not managed to write a small start script that starts everything automatically. So I had to start some small scripts as we set up the lander on its start-position. Therefore we needed a keyboard and a monitor on the lander. Nice, unplaned side-effect of this was that the people who stand on the crater rim to watch CESAR could see something when we turned out the light to see with the infrared camera.

Thilo got some important operator training.

Thilo was very conenctrated controlling the robot. ( click to enlarge )

Also most of the other teams were working on their robots during the night. Some locked themselves inside the truck. I think only the Finnish team left early that day.

The site at night. Dark and cold. Just take a picture and than back to the truck ( click to enlarge )

So much for now. Stay tuned for more stuff from CESAR and his triumphal ride.

Hello everyone and greetings from the first Lunar Robotics Challenge!

-The Cesar Crew

After all important ordered parts arrived we started to implement the first iteration of our robot.
This includes soldering our own system board, as you can see here.

Mehmed working on the electronics ( click to enlarge )

Good evening everyone,

the Critical Design Review has been completed successfully; however, before we talk on the further proceedings, we would like to share a few impressions of the CDR meeting and our days in the Netherlands.

First off, we would like to thank everyone from ESA for the invitation to the ESTEC facility and the great organization of the whole event. We experienced a great time in Noordwijk and really enjoyed our stay there!

The CDR meeting was opened by a short welcome by Mr. Visentin from ESA and an introduction of each present team, followed by a few very interesting presentations by ESA staff members, which gave an insight on the latest moon missions, placing the Lunar Robotics Challenge in an overall context with future missions to the moon.

After lunch, the teams presentations on their respective concepts began, starting with our own team. First, Jacob Schwendner started to explain the robots overall concept, hereafter giving details on the planned locomotion system, before he then handed over to Thilo Kaupisch who finished the presentation by giving details on the electronics and our planned software system. The whole presentation was concluded by showing some of our experiment results and one small video clip of testing our first CESAR prototype.

Afterwards, a discussion time of 15 minutes was granted to the audience in order to ask questions or give other comments and critics on the concept. All in all, our proposal has been approved with only minor changes, which are currently being adressed by our crew.

The rest of the day and the first half of thursday were filled with the other teams presentations, who all showed great and impressive concepts - we are anxious to see all of them in action at the challenge site in october! The whole meeting was topped off with a very exciting tour through the ESTECs testing facilities, which gave us an interesting insight in the final testing procedures of modern satelites and other space vehicles.

All in all, the meeting was a great event and we would like to thank the other teams for their comments and critics. At the CDR, we found very different, yet very interesting approaches on the given task and would therefore like to wish all the other teams the best of luck for their construction phase. We're definately keen on seeing their systems in the final challenge!

To conclude this post, we would like to share some of our testing footage with you all! Enjoy!

Good evening,

it is the week before the CDR, and a lot of work still to be done. The meeting schedule was tightened to almost daily full crew meetings in order to finalize the conceptual preparation work which has gotten to a pretty detailed level during the past week. The crew is split up into different smaller task groups where each is adressed to different parts of the CESAR robot.

Based on the locomotion testing results we have to redesign the back part of the robot in order to improve mobility on sand terrain as well as on sloping ground. Therefore, it was decided to design the back part of the robot as a separate module in order to maintain easy exchangeability.

Also, the first calculations on the manipulator arm have been made; additionally our crew is currently working out the details on the manipulator arms suspension and the corresponding camera system. We also have begun to develop the RCU ( Remote Control Unit ) for the CESAR.

We also finally made it to update the project blog, so check out the newly added sections describing the overall project task and our robots concept.

Stay tuned for further updates!