Design and automated assembly of Planetary LEGO Brick for lunar in-situ construction

Cheng Zhou , Bin Tang , Lieyun Ding , Przemyslaw Sekula , Ying Zhou , Zekun Zhang

Abstract

Prior studies of brick design for future lunar constructed facilities generated various possible solution ideas. This paper describes the proposed design and automated assembly of Planetary LEGO Brick for lunar in-situ construction. The finite element method was implemented to analyze the state of the proposed structure based on ABAQUS. A Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN) with the Xception architecture was used to recognize six various brick types in the process of assembling a lunar habitat facility with the use of a mechanical arm in a laboratory setting. A novel scheme with a modular system is proposed for lunar in-situ construction using Planetary LEGO Brick. The designed lunar habitat can be used to protect the astronauts from the extreme environment on the moon and provide a place for them to rest. The results demonstrate that the design scheme of Planetary LEGO Brick provides a possible solution for lunar in-situ construction. The proposed design scheme of Planetary LEGO Brick provides a feasible way for the construction of a lunar habitat and the developed algorithm can be used for automated assembly of bricks and other building components.

Keywords: Lunar habitat, In-situ construction, Finite element Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN), Automated assembly, Planetary LEGO Brick

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2020.103282