Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1997 · 36 citations · 4 references
EngineeringExploration StudiesMechanical EngineeringField RoboticsEducationSpace MissionAerospace RoboticsNew Mobile RobotsUnmanned Ground VehicleMartian ExplorationLegged RobotKinematicsMars Exploration MissionsMars Sample ReturnLightweight RoversAerospace EngineeringMechanical SystemsSpace ArchitectureScience And Technology StudiesTechnologyRobotics
Lightweight survivable rovers (LSR) use composite materials, collapsible running gear, integrated thermal‑structural chassis, and other mechanical features to achieve improved mobility, environmental robustness, and reduced mass, volume, and power compared with conventional designs such as NASA/JPL’s Mars Pathfinder Sojourner. The authors aim to develop new lightweight mobile robots for Mars exploration and a smaller 5‑kg LSR‑type vehicle for sample‑return missions, enabling travel to, localization of, pickup, and transport of sample caches to an Earth‑return ascent vehicle. They demonstrate the LSR‑1 architecture featuring 2D composite strut running gear, 3D machined composite joints, a collapsible hybrid composite‑aluminum wheel, a unit‑body structural‑thermal chassis with internal temperature isolation, a spot‑pushbroom laser/CCD sensor, and a 0.7 m footprint six‑wheel rocker‑bogie vehicle weighing 7 kg with a 0.3 kg multispectral imager, while a prototype sample‑retrieval rover offers a fully collapsible mobility system, 25 % stowage volume, and an actively articulated axle for adjustable wheel geometry.
We report on the development of new mobile robots for Mars exploration missions. These 'lightweight survivable rover (LSR)' systems are of potential interest to both space and terrestrial applications, and are distinguished from more conventional designs by their use of new composite materials, collapsible running gear, integrated thermal-structural chassis, and other mechanical features enabling improved mobility and environmental robustness at reduced mass, volume, and power. Our first demonstrated such rover architecture, LSR-1, introduces running gear based on 2D composite struts and 3D machined composite joints, a novel collapsible hybrid composite-aluminum wheel design, a unit-body structural- thermal chassis with improved internal temperature isolation and stabilization, and a spot-pushbroom laser/CCD sensor enabling accurate, fast hazard detection and terrain mapping. LSR-1 is an approximately .7 $MIL 1.0 meter(Lambda) 2(W X L) footprint six-wheel (20 cm dia.) rocker-bogie geometry vehicle of approximately 30 cm ground clearance, weighing only 7 kilograms with an onboard .3 kilogram multi-spectral imager and spectroscopic photometer. By comparison, NASA/JPL's recently flown Mars Pathfinder rover Sojourner is an 11+ kilogram flight experiment (carrying a 1 kg APXS instrument) having approximately .45 X .6 meter(Lambda) 2(WXL) footprint and 15 cm ground clearance, and about half the warm electronics enclosure (WEE) volume with twice the diurnal temperature swing (-40 to +40 degrees Celsius) of LSR- 1 in nominal Mars environments. We are also developing a new, smaller 5 kilogram class LSR-type vehicle for Mars sample return -- the travel to, localization of, pick-up, and transport back to an Earth return ascent vehicle of a sample cache collected by earlier science missions. This sample retrieval rover R&D prototype has a completely collapsible mobility system enabling rover stowage to approximately 25% operational volume, as well an actively articulated axle, allowing changeable pose of the wheel strut geometry for improved transverse and manipulation characteristics.
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The Rocky 7 rover: a Mars sciencecraft prototype
S. Hayati, R. Volpe, Paul Backes et al. · 2002 · 129 citations
The Rocky 7 Mars rover prototype
R. Volpe, J. Balaram, T. Ohm et al. · 2002 · 115 citations