The Robotics Institute

Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute

Copyright notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

Abstract

Carnegie Mellon University is pursuing research of robotic vehicles for lunar exploration. In our mission scenario two rovers will traverse one thousand kilometers on the Moon over a period of two years, starting in 1998. Throughout the mission the rovers will transmit to Earth rich video telemetry to be used by theme parks ventures and scientist worldwide. Critical to achieving the goals of the two-year mission is the rover's locomotion capability. The requirements of survivability in the harsh lunar environment, substantial terrainability and long term reliability drive the configuration of the locomotion system. These performance requirements have led to the consideration of a wheeled configuration as the preferred locomotion scheme for the intended lunar traverse. To achieve substantial climbing capability and mitigate body excursions we selected a six-wheeled configuration that utilizes pivot arm linkages for body suspension. In this paper we discuss the configuration of robotic locomotion for the moon, and describe analysis and experimental results obtained through testing of a physical prototype.

Notes

Text Reference

Y Fuke, Dimitrios (Dimi) Apostolopoulos, Eric Rollins, Jack Silberman, and William (Red) L. Whittaker, "A Prototype Locomotion Concept for a Lunar Robotic Explorer," 1995 IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Vehicles, September, 1995, pp. 382 - 387.

BibTeX Reference

@inproceedings{Apostolopoulos_1995_1015,
   author = "Y Fuke and Dimitrios (Dimi) Apostolopoulos and Eric Rollins and Jack Silberman and William (Red) L. Whittaker",
   title = "A Prototype Locomotion Concept for a Lunar Robotic Explorer",
   booktitle = "1995 IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Vehicles",
   pages = "382 - 387",
   month = "September",
   year = "1995",
}

The Robotics Institute

Menu