Optimization of driving force and lateral force for the polar wind-driven vehicle

Abstract

Currently, robots' range of exploration is quite limited due to the finite number of batteries or fuel so that robots can't achieve a long time and wide range exploration which also can't meet the requirement of the polar expedition. A polar wind-driven vehicle is proposed in this paper. Dynamics analysis of the wind-driven system is used to optimize the driving force and rolling force in order to control the system and navigate. The airfoil design has a crucial influence on the aerodynamic characteristics of wind-driven system. Through a comparative analysis of several mature airfoils, we select the final airfoil. We find the only uncertain variable is the drag force of the vehicle body and designed a set of simulation experiments to find the characteristics of the drag coefficient of the vehicle body. Meanwhile, we obtain the conclusion that the body drag coefficients are decreasing along with the increasing of prevailing wind speed. And it changes slightly at the high wind speed in polar environment.