This is in late september 2008 that Google launched another new innovative project : nothing else than a race to the moon called the Google Lunar X Prize. According to the contest website, “The Google Lunar X PRIZE is a $30 million international competition to safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send images and data back to the Earth“.
Many teams are currently competing in this competition and one of them is the Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic. This team has designed a FPGA-based robot controller that is able to drive in real-time seven brushless motors and a smart camera. According to Astrobotic’s team, “Field-Programmable-Gate-Arrays are the right intermediary to offload computer cycles while reliably controlling the motors“.
More about Astrobotic’s technology can be found on their website.