Mircea Badescu,1 Hyeong Jae Lee,1 Stewart Sherrit,1 Xiaoqi Bao,1 Yoseph Bar-Cohen,1 Shannon Jackson,1 Jacob Chesin,1 Kris Zacny,2 Gale L. Paulsen,2 Bolek Mellerowicz,2 Daniel Kim2
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Developing technologies that would enable future NASA exploration missions to penetrate deeper into
the subsurface of planetary bodies for sample collection is of great importance. Performing these tasks while using
minimal mass/volume systems and with low energy consumption is another set of requirements imposed on such
technologies. A deep drill, called Auto-Gopher II, is currently being developed as a joint effort between JPL’s NDEAA
laboratory and Honeybee Robotics Corp. The Auto-Gopher II is a wireline rotary-hammer drill that combines formation
breaking by hammering using an ultrasonic actuator and cuttings removal by rotating a fluted auger bit. The hammering
mechanism is based on the Ultrasonic/Sonic Drill/Corer (USDC) mechanism that has been developed as an adaptable tool
for many drilling and coring applications. The USDC uses an intermediate free-flying mass to transform high frequency
vibrations of a piezoelectric transducer horn tip into sonic hammering of the drill bit. The USDC concept was used in a
previous task to develop an Ultrasonic/Sonic Ice Gopher and then integrated into a rotary hammer device to develop the
Auto-Gopher-I. The lessons learned from these developments are being integrated into the development of the Auto-
Gopher-II, an autonomous deep wireline drill with integrated cuttings and sample management and drive electronics.
Subsystems of the wireline drill are being developed in parallel at JPL and Honeybee Robotics Ltd. This paper presents
the development efforts of the piezoelectric actuator, cuttings removal and retention flutes and drive electronics.
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Mircea Badescu, Hyeong Jae Lee, Stewart Sherrit, Xiaoqi Bao, Yoseph Bar-Cohen, Shannon Jackson, Jacob Chesin, Kris Zacny, Gale L. Paulsen, Bolek Mellerowicz, Daniel Kim, "Auto-Gopher-II: an autonomous wireline rotary-hammer ultrasonic drill," Proc. SPIE 10166, Industrial and Commercial Applications of Smart Structures Technologies 2017, 101660K (4 April 2017); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2260243