Study on wheeled forms of lunar robots for traversing soft terrain

Abstract

Lunar rovers are required to move on rough terrains such as in craters and rear cliffs where it is scientifically very important to explore. Recently, wheel typed rovers are popular for planetary exploration missions. However, there is a problem that the wheel typed rovers have possibility of stack. Therefore, this paper investigates a mechanism of kinetic behavior between the wheels of the exploration rovers and soil. The important parameters are extracted by considering the mechanism. This paper proposes an elastic wheel by considering the important parameters. The elastic wheel has the surface which can be changed flexibly toward rough terrain. Running experiments on soil which imitated regolith are carried out to observe the traversability of the elastic wheel using slip ratio and sinkage.