Design Optimization of Rocker Bogie System and Development of Look-Up Table for Reconfigurable Wheels for a Planetary Rover

• DOI: 10.4273/ijvss.8.2.01
• Publication Date: 2016-07-16T17:23:37Z
• Authors: A. Kshirsagar; A. Guha
• Keywords: Bogie; Table (database); Lookup table

Planetary rovers offer promising alternatives for conducting in-situ experiments on other planets. Considering the huge costs of such exploration missions, it becomes necessary to design an optimal mobility system configuration meet mission goals. In this paper, a constrained optimization procedure is presented obtain parameters rocker-bogie system. More recently, researchers have proposed idea using reconfigurable wheels, which would be able change their shape according terrain, improve rover’s performance. One major challenges in implementation wheels control and autonomy. To avoid complex on-board calculations, method look-up table autonomously changing wheel dimensions paper. For obtaining table, physics based motion dynamics simulation model developed, incorporating wheel-soil contact mechanics rocker bogie The simulated found conformance with ground profile. Performance metrics like slip ratio, effective pressure power consumption are evaluated through simulations. Finally, lookup autonomous certain terrain characteristics.