The Challenges of Designing the Rocker-Bogie Suspension for the Mars Exploration Rover

Abstract

Over the past decade, the rocker-bogie suspension design has become a proven mobility application known for its superior vehicle stability and obstacle-climbing capability [I,2]. Following several technology and research rover implementations, the system was successfully flown as part of ars Pathfinder's Sojourner rover [3] When the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Project was fir posed, the use of a rocker-bogie suspension was the obvious choice due to its extensive heritage challenge posed by MER was to design a lightweight rocker-bogie suspension that would permit bility to stow within the limited space available and deploy into a configuration that the rover could then safely use to egress from the lander and explore the Martian surface. This paper will describe how the MER rocker-bogie suspension subsystem was able to meet these conflicting design requirements while highlighting the variety of deployment and latch mechanisms employed in the design.