Abstract
This paper presents a technique for driving a wheel to control the sinkage of a planetary rover on loose soil. Dynamic sinkage of the wheels of the rover always occurs when it travels on loose soil in the planetary surface; sinkage is then caused by the soil deformation due to a compressive force generated by the wheel and the soil conveyance due to slippage in the wheel. When the wheel is driven in an acceleration profile with a trapezoidal shape, it is experimentally confirmed that the depth of sinkage changes during both acceleration and deceleration. Further, it is also confirmed that the terminal sinkage is proportional to the magnitude of the maximum rotational acceleration and deceleration of the wheel; consequently, we propose the method of controlling the sinkage by adjusting their magnitude. The proposed control is verified through the experiments using the single wheel test bed and the full body rover with 4 wheels; thus, it is confirmed that twofold increase of sinkage is caused and the terminal sinkage is controlled, especially suppressed.
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