Martian Builders: The Robots of the Mars Colony
"Mars will become a planet inhabited only by robots, sent from Earth to build habitats before the arrival of humans. This will be known as the ‘Robotic Age of Mars’."
When humans land on Mars, their colony will be move-in ready. Robots will have done the heavy lifting and dangerous work of constructing the structures in the treacherous Martian environment. This era will be known as the 'Robotic Age' of Mars, where the planet was inhabited solely by robots.
Here are the different types of Martian construction robots, ranging from air drone builders to mining and rescue robots.
Classifications: The 3 Types of Martian Building Robots
1. Dumb Robots: These robots have very basic instructions and follow a set path, going back and forth loading and unloading materials. Examples include transporters and miners.
2. A.I. Robots: These robots make decisions autonomously, without human involvement. Examples include manipulator robots with robotic arms and attachments, or single air drones.
3. Swarm Robots: A group of robots that are connected to each other and work on the same task in close quarters. Examples include modular robots that can break apart and work separately or attach together to form one larger robot, or a swarm of air drones that fly closely together and coordinate their mission autonomously.
Martian Builder Robots “What is my purpose?”
A number of builder robots are multifunctional and use various tool attachments to perform different tasks. Others are engineered for one specific task.
1. Air Drone Builders
Basic-level drones serve as scouts, surveying the terrain, or work in a group to provide coordinates to the land-builder robots, functioning as mini GPS satellites."
Advanced drones are specifically designed for construction, weaving cables to create bridges and transporting building materials to upper areas of a construction site.
Sprayer drones cover structures with Martian soil to serve as insulation.
2. Solar Farm Robots
Solar panels themselves are robots (dumb robots) programmed to track and follow the sun during the day and year as the seasons change. They are more efficient, able to generate more power than static, non-tracking solar panels, meaning fewer solar panels are needed, covering less space, and reducing the need for dust cleaning.
Each solar panel has a robotic attachment that senses when the panel is covered in dust and cleans it.
3. Search and Rescue, and Mech Robots
Maintenance robots carry spare parts and use their manipulator robotic arm to repair other robots that have malfunctioned in the field.
Fast and strong, these robots are also able to search for robots that have gotten stranded or stuck in terrain, needing to be towed out.
They also clean other robots in the field, such as the solar panel cleaners when they themselves get covered in dust.
They perform inspections on structures that have possible damage. They also conduct environmental clean-ups, cleaning up any material that gets dropped or spilled onto the surface at a construction site.
4. Charger Robots (Battery Swapping)
Rather than having a number of robots taking turns working shifts as one group recharges, batteries are hot-swapped in the field. Allowing some robots to work through the night.
A charger robot carries the batteries from the base to the construction site. As they only carry the batteries and no construction equipment, it is more fuel-efficient for them to go to the robots needing a new battery, rather than the building robots go back to the base.
5. Backpack Rovers
Robots acting as storage units, carrying larger, less frequently used tool attachments that the builder robots can quickly access instead of returning to the base.
6. Builder Robots
Small builder robots flatten, melt, and compact surfaces to create foundations for building habitats or create landing pads to protect rockets from the kick-up of dust and dirt.
These small modular robots can either connect and function as one larger robot, or work as separate smaller units.
They can also bulldoze dirt to build mounds and hills around habitats for radiation shielding.
When it comes to building structures, the builder robots transport materials, such as window frames and dome tops, to the large 3D Habitat Printer. The habitat printer is a tall robotic arm that drives itself into place. It is is slow and heavy but does not need to move until the structure is finished printing.
7. Ice Harvesters - Mining
Although humans have yet to set foot on Mars, their life support supplies are built up and stored by the robots.
Ice water and carbon capture are needed to produce breathable oxygen, water, and rocket fuel.
Large mining harvesters travel to mapped resource locations near the base. They extract ice from just under the surface, purify it, and bring it back to the base for storage or to be converted into other substances.
8. Material Handling Robots - Transporters
Transporter robots come in two classes: light and heavy. Heavy-lifting transporters are large, slower, and use more energy, but are more insulated and able to work through the cold Martian nights using onboard floodlights.
A large tanker, resembling a petrol gas truck, stores the 3D printing filament made at the base from crushed rock and plant glue and transports it out to the stationary 3D Habitat Printer.
Light-class transporters are faster and carry lightweight materials, using less energy.
The Robotics Engineering Lab on Mars
Due to the time delay in communications between Earth and Mars, the robots must work by themselves autonomously. Depending on the alignment of the two planets, it can take 3-21 minutes to send data one way.
All Martian robots are electric-powered, using batteries charged from the solar farm.
Larger robots are armored with more insulation, enabling them to work through the sub-freezing nights (-70C, -94F).
It is more efficient to have a dedicated robot in the field, at the construction site, storing essential items such as batteries and tool attachments, rather than having individual builder robots return to the main base to refuel and retool.
A depot at the base stores and cleans robots of Martian dust, and sends over-the-air updates.
Level 2 Machinery
Super large-scale machinery is ferried to Mars on board the Starship 2.0. Twice the diameter with four times the internal space as the first-generation Starship, it is large enough to be a space station itself.
Digging Class: Terra
A tunnel digging robot used for excavating tunnels to connect crater habitats, lava tubes, and launch pads. It is also used to dig large underground living and farming spaces and for mass-scale ice, rock, and metal mining.
Transporter: Levitating Cable Car
Enclosed tunnels, buried under piled-up mounds of dirt, make up the Martian Rail Line. The carts hover over magnetic railings, assisted by the lower gravity on Mars. Rovers located at the ends of the tunnel act as motors, pulling the cable cars and carts back and forth.
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