Using Distributed Transfer Function Method (DTFM) for Autonomous Health Monitoring of Interplanetary Drills

This paper documents the development of an autonomous health monitoring system for an interplanetary drill using the Distributed Transfer Function Method (DTFM). With the desire to search for extinct and extant life on other planets, it becomes necessary to develop deep penetrating system to capture a sample for science analysis. These drilling systems may encounter icy soils, which can cause the drill to freeze-in if preemptive measures are not taken. The drill operation is further challenged by long communications delay, which makes real time human operation impossible. For these reasons it is important for the drill to recover from faults completely autonomously. A method for autonomous drilling and fault recover presented in this paper uses modal analysis to compare natural frequencies with a model implemented with DTFM. The two approaches are: 1. use the model to calculate expected frequencies and then compare with real time data; or 2. port the real time natural frequencies into the DTFM modal to obtain the boundary conditions of the system. The implementation of both methods is documented herein.