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| Courtesy agsandrew deviant art |
Robots will be the predominant tool for asteroid mining. To be specific - autonomous smart robots. Artificial intelligence will be incorporated into the swarms of prospecting and mining bots required to successfully recover the wealth of material that awaits humanity in the estimated 150 million asteroids in orbit around our sun.
In January of 2018, Planetary Resources put a shoe-box-sized satellite, Arkyd-6, into orbit to examine asteroids for their suitability to be mined and test the systems and components for a new generation of satellite, the Arkyd-301. This swarm of satellites is intended to go to asteroids and take a closer look at their potential. That will depend on Planetary Resources securing the funding.
Plastic grocery bags prefer this as their second career.
When it comes time to harvest the material from asteroids or steer them into an orbit around the Earth or Moon, however, the complexity of mechanisms and procedures will require artificial intelligence. With remotely controlled drones, signals will be delayed by many minutes each way as the asteroid approaches apogee, the farthest point in its orbit. This is too much of a disruption for some of these tasks. In minutes things can go wrong, inadvertently destroying valuable tools, materials, and machines necessary to complete the mission. With billions of dollars at stake, they will need an onsite intelligence to carry on seamlessly.
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| Machines in space - courtesy NASA |
Unfortunately, we have not reached the urbane sophistication of the robot drones described in the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks or the proficiency of the cynical ex-military drones in the Polity novels of Neal Asher. I would expect the asteroid mining business is hoping technology will catch up to its needs in time to harvest the billions of dollars it expects to see from asteroid mining.
The space mining industry is not quite the orphan child of AI development. The same advances needed by the military for unmanned fighting drones apply, in general, to what the asteroid mining industry needs. Also, underwater drones with AI capabilities will be a boon to the offshore energy industry. The Chinese are developing an underwater military drone, the HN-1.
The tools drones use in space may be quite different from those on Earth, but the principles behind the use of the tools is the same. The drone must solve those same niggling problems humans run into and complete the task at hand.
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| Tracked drone - courtesy DOD |
I say “not quite” orphan because the drones mentioned - military, underwater, etc. - are still under development, so the asteroid mining companies will have to either wait and hope to license the technology from big names like Google or the government or begin the process of doing it themselves.
As to whether the space mining industry has the resources to develop its own AI is in question. The most publicized such company, Planetary Resources, is currently having financial difficulties. After downsizing, it was planning to auction off surplus machines and furniture. Now the auction has been postponed. No matter what happens to Planetary Resources, the asteroid mining industry will continue. The payoff is too big to ignore. It will, however, be biding its time for the development of AI to reach a plateau allowing for unmanned prospector/miner drones.
Groups thinking about forming corporations to mine asteroids should have a complete path of development from finding the correct asteroid to marketing its products before asking for money. That is because this wealth of material is worth much more in space to those planning projects from Moon bases to orbital habitats. Smart investors will reward those that have AI as an integral part of this detailed plan.
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