Enabling Faster Locomotion of Planetary Rovers With a Mechanically-Hybrid Suspension

The exploration of the lunar poles and the collection of samples from the martian surface are characterized by shorter time windows demanding increased autonomy and speeds. Autonomous mobile robots must intrinsically cope with a wider range of disturbances. Faster off-road navigation has been explor...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE robotics and automation letters Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 619 - 626
Main Authors: Rodriguez-Martinez, David, Uno, Kentaro, Sawa, Kenta, Uda, Masahiro, Kudo, Gen, Diaz, Gustavo Hernan, Umemura, Ayumi, Santra, Shreya, Yoshida, Kazuya
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.01.2024
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subjects:
Autonomy
Compliant joints and mechanisms
Field tests
Gravitational fields
Gravity
Impact loads
Locomotion
Mars surface
Mechanism design
Microgravity
Mobile robots
Moon
Planetary rovers
Robots
Shock absorbers
space robotics and automation
Space vehicles
Wheels
Windows (intervals)
ISSN:2377-3766, 2377-3766
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The exploration of the lunar poles and the collection of samples from the martian surface are characterized by shorter time windows demanding increased autonomy and speeds. Autonomous mobile robots must intrinsically cope with a wider range of disturbances. Faster off-road navigation has been explored for terrestrial applications but the combined effects of increased speeds and reduced gravity fields are yet to be fully studied. In this paper, we design and demonstrate a novel fully passive suspension design for wheeled planetary robots, which couples for the first time a high-range passive rocker with elastic in-wheel coil-over shock absorbers. The design was initially conceived and verified in a reduced-gravity (1.625 m/s<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">{^{2}}</tex-math></inline-formula>) simulated environment, where three different passive suspension configurations were evaluated against steep slopes and unexpected obstacles, and later prototyped and validated in a series of field tests. The proposed mechanically-hybrid suspension proves to mitigate more effectively the negative effects (high-frequency/high-amplitude vibrations and impact loads) of faster locomotion (<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">\sim</tex-math></inline-formula>1 m/s) over unstructured terrains under varied gravity fields.
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ISSN:2377-3766
2377-3766
DOI:10.1109/LRA.2023.3335769