Study on an 8-Wheel Suspension to Enhance the Hill-Climbing Performance for a Planetary Exploration Rover

Abstract

Planetary exploration rovers are likely to make a trip on a winding and sloping road of irregular surfaces to the destination in order to accomplish scientific missions. One of the key technologies for rovers is a suspension for traveling and performing exploration missions; the suspension is an essential area of technology for a stable movement of a rover. In this study, an 8-wheel suspension is designed to enable efficient climbing of slopes on a passage to the destination. For the two front wheels among the eight wheels, the moment at the pivot connecting two wheels is derived when the distance between the wheels and the torque of wheels are same. A test experiment was performed to compare the magnitude of moment according to the change in tilt angle and the position of the pivot. Finally, a suspension design considering the position of the pivot was proposed to enhance the hill-climbing performance.

Flight Dynamics and Navigation for Planetary Missions in Korea: Past Efforts, Recent Status, and Future Preparations

“…Apart from these efforts, diverse areas related to planetary missions have already been initiated to prepare for future planetary missions. These studies include a planetary rover mission (Kim et al 2012;Eom et al 2012Eom et al , 2014, dynamic simulator development (Rew et al 2010), conceptual asteroid mission trajectory design (Yoo et al 2009;Song et al 2010c;Song & Park 2015), and a planetary mission trajectory concept generation using small satellites (Song et al 2015b(Song et al , 2015cLee et al 2017c). From these combined studies, it is believed that the cornerstone of the future Korean planetary missions, such as a lunar landing or asteroid sample mission, would be more achievable.…”

Module-based structure design of wheeled mobile robot

“…Using the DARTS/DSHELL framework, Yen and Jain (1999) developed the ROAMS system for rover analysis, modelling and real-time simulation; following this work, Jain et al (2004) presented ROAMS physics-based simulator for closed-loop simulation and operator-in-the-loop simulation. Fuke and Krotkov (1996) investigated the traverse of a lunar rover on rough terrain by extending and adapting the classic dead reckoning approach. Tao et al (2006) designed a sixwheeled rover and tested the prototype in an unstructured terrain.…”