Design Of Rover Research Articles

IoT based Solar Panel Cleaning Rover

The primary objective of this proposed study is to design a system for effectively maintaining the cleanliness of solar panels, thereby enhancing their performance and longevity through an Internet of Things-based solar panel cleaning rover equipped with a sensors, and manual automation capabilities. A suite of sensors, including dust sensors, enables the rover to gather relevant data about the cleanliness status and ambient conditions surrounding the solar panels. Manual automation features empower users to intervene and control the rover's movements and cleaning actions as needed, providing flexibility and customization in operation. Furthermore, the rover is designed to connect directly with water tanks, facilitating an autonomous water supply for the cleaning process. A sponge brush mechanism is integrated into the rover's design to effectively remove dust from the solar panel surfaces. The proposed work has developed a prototype of the IoT-based solar panel cleaning rover, which has been tested to demonstrate its effectiveness in improving solar panel efficiency and reducing maintenance efforts.

Stiffness optimization design of wheeled-legged rover integrating active and passive compliance capabilities

Compliance capability is one of the most important properties of suspension systems for rough-terrain robots. This imposes specific requirements on system stiffness design, which directly determines the platform's performance in response to external stimuli. To address the challenge of stiffness optimization design in active and passive compliant systems, this paper proposes a novel and practical method for optimizing stiffness for a terrain-adaptive wheel-legged rover. Firstly, the kinematic model of this multi-degree-of-freedom platform is established. Secondly, the deformation capability coefficient, load capacity coefficient, energy efficiency coefficient, and dynamic stability coefficient are derived as performance indices to assess the behavior of the system. By establishing the relationship between joint configuration variation and system stiffness, stiffness parameters could be evaluated through these performance indices. Ultimately, the global optimum stiffness parameters are selected from the refined intersection of the individual performance optimal domains. Thirdly, the optimum parameters are calculated and applicability verified numerically. The designed parameters are verified experimentally on a wheeled-legged rover. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can find the parameter combination that achieves optimal system performance, thereby enhancing the system's terrain adaptability.

Design & Development of Rescue Assistance Rover for Land-Based Operations

In the face of natural disasters like earthquakes and landslides, timely and efficient rescue operations are paramount to saving lives. However, these operations are often hindered by hazardous conditions and inaccessible terrain. This research focuses on the design and development of a Rescue Assistance Rover (RAR) aimed at enhancing the capabilities of rescuers in challenging environments. The RAR integrates advanced robotics, sensory systems, and communication technologies to navigate through debris, assess hazards, and provide crucial assistance to rescue teams. By leveraging autonomy and remote operation capabilities, the RAR aims to augment human efforts, improving overall response effectiveness and minimizing risks to both rescuers and survivors. This paper outlines the conceptualization, design considerations, development stages, and potential applications of the RAR, highlighting its potential to revolutionize disaster response efforts and save lives in critical situations. Key Words: Additive Manufacturing, 3D Printing, Rocker Bogie Mechanism, Arduino Programming, Rescue Operations, Robotics

Design of a Spherical Rover Driven by Pendulum and Control Moment Gyroscope for Planetary Exploration

The spherical shape is an interesting approach to develop exploration robots, or rovers, thanks to its capability of ensuring omnidirectional motion and of being basically unsensitive to possible rollovers. This works intends to propose a novel detailed design for such a kind of robot and to discuss the performance that can be reached by adopting this solution. The work hence introduces the requirements assumed for the design of the robot and discloses the general layout that was selected, which includes a pendulum for motion transmission and two coupled gyroscopes to overcome high, steep obstacles, such as steps. The paper then summarizes the functional design computation carried out to size and selects the components of the system. Eventually, a control algorithm is described and tested on a complete multibody model of the robot. The results in the execution of standard maneuvers such as motion on a horizontal plane, as well as in the overcome of a step, are shown. The energetic balance of the rover is described, and some preliminary consideration about mission planning are reported in the final discussion.

Design and Development of an Autonomous Rover Application using A Rocker-Bogie Mechanism In Agriculture

The crucial topic of upgrading the rover over its earlier designs is covered in the project work "STUDY ON ROCKER ROVER AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION IN THE FIELD OF AGRICULTURE." The ROCKER rover was intended for use on similar excursions that require it to function in challenging conditions, such as the Moon's surface. However, the use of the rocker rover can be expanded even further in fields of employment where the land has to be used for operations, such as agricultural farming. Our research focuses on how the rocker rover can be modified for use in farming, greatly increasing the automation of the agricultural sector. The rover's body is entirely composed of PVC to boost. With the introduction of cutting-edge technologies, agricultural practices are changing with the goal of enhancing sustainability, accuracy, and efficiency. The design and construction of an autonomous rover with a rocker-bogie suspension system specifically intended for agricultural applications is the main goal of this study. When doing in-situ scientific investigation of goals that are separated by several metres to tens of km, rocker bogie are crucial. The complicated mobility designs of today use numerous wheels or legs. They are vulnerable to mechanical failure brought on by Mars' hostile atmosphere. a four-wheeled rover with a high degree of mobility suspension system that is effective in navigating uneven terrain. The main mechanical characteristic of the rocker bogie design is how simple its drive train is—it only requires two motors to move. Because both motors are housed inside the body, where heat variance is minimised, dependability and efficiency are raised. Because there aren't many barriers on natural terrain that call for the rover to use all of its front wheels, four wheels are used

Development and Design of an Innovative and Lightweight Reconnaissance Rover Using Composite Materials

Modern planetary rovers are based on aluminum chassis, but thanks to carbon fiber composites, the weight of such mobility platforms can be dramatically lowered. This paper describes the design of a 6-wheeled rover with a rocker-bogie suspension, adopting carbon fiber laminates and short-fiber-reinforced polymers. This last feature is an innovative approach that fits well with the use of additive manufacturing, allowing for both highly optimized parts and rapid fabrication of spares in future manned missions on the Lunar surface. The structural design was validated against a set of boundary conditions (static analyses) and requirements of launch and space environments (dynamic analyses) as prescribed by European Cooperation for Space Standardization standards. The composite rover was designed to lighten the structure itself and increase the payload-to-total-mass ratio: the composite solution offers a ratio three times higher than the typical rover (ratio from 0.12 to 0.38).

Design and development of rover with pick and place Mechanism

This work presents a unique rover design that can traverse over a rough terrain and incorporate a pick-and-place mechanism over there. In the fields of robotics and space technology, rovers are crucial. Moreover, the rocker bogie design has established itself as a reliable mobility solution recognized for its improved vehicle stability and capability to traverse over obstacles. ‘Mars Exploration Rover’ has played a vital role in space exploration because it was an apparent choice because of its design of rocker-bogie suspension. The rover’s design has been modelled with CAD software and validated through simulation testing. Thus, the various improvements ensures mechanical sustainability, structural soundness, stability, and lightweight design.

Granular flow experiment using artificial gravity generator at International Space Station

Studying the gravity-dependent characteristics of regolith, fine-grained granular media covering extra-terrestrial bodies is essential for the reliable design and analysis of landers and rovers for space exploration. In this study, we propose an experimental approach to examine a granular flow under stable artificial gravity conditions for a long duration generated by a centrifuge at the International Space Station. We also perform a discrete element simulation of the granular flow in both artificial and natural gravity environments. The simulation results verify that the granular flows in artificial and natural gravity are consistent. Further, regression analysis of the experimental results reveals that the mass flow rate of granular flow quantitatively follows a well-known physics-based law with some deviations under low-gravity conditions, implying that the bulk density of the granular media decreases with gravity. This insight also indicates that the bulk density considered in simulation studies of space probes under low-gravity conditions needs to be tuned for their reliable design and analysis.

Design and analysis of a high-speed planetary rover with an adaptive suspension and spring damper

The development of deep space exploration has led to new exploration demands that cannot be met by traditional planetary rovers. This paper proposes a new wheeled rover that combines the advantages of passive all-wheel attachment and vibration reduction at high speeds. This rover can achieve vibration reduction in the vertical direction from ground excitation, preventing the instability of pitch and roll. Flexible wheels were used to reduce the high-frequency excitation of the ground on the rover. The design concept and mechanical principle of the proposed rover were comprehensively analyzed. A quasi-static kinematic model was developed to analyze the overstepping performance of the rover with this new design. Further, the response characteristics of the system to the ground excitation were investigated by vibration equations established using the Lagrangian method. The optimal parameters were obtained using a genetic algorithm to optimize the system with multiple objectives. Furthermore, the overstepping performance, all-wheel attachment, and vibration reduction of the planetary rover were verified through multi-body simulation. The proposed rover has considerable potential for missions such as the Mars sample return and planetary station construction.

Design and Control of Autonomous Rover for Foliage Navigation

Implementation of UGV in civilian applications is getting trendy and normalized due to its solid achievement in executing mission under harsh environments. The UGV foliage environment-oriented applications even attracted the people’s attention in correspond sectors to ease their tasks with guaranteed performance. Given this, the development of the autonomous rover from sensors and control aspects with the consideration of foliage environment interest people to enhance its functionality. To ensure the sensor is not easily affected by the environment factor, the radar and the camera are selected to provide the environment perception to the rover. The approach for a linear Proportional-Derivative (PD) controller with the dynamic modelling of the UGV is also discussed in this paper. The study shows preliminary results that are working.

PIPE TRAVERSING ROBOT

As technology advances, the demand for automated systems has increased exponentially. The development of robotic systems has made it possible to explore and operate in remote and hazardous environments. One such application is the inspection of underground pipelines, which requires a mobile robot that can traverse inside the pipeline, inspecting and repairing any damage that may occur. For the rover, the diameter of the pipe is required minimum diameter of the pipe is 274mm and the maximum diameter of the pipe is 324 mm. The rover is equipped with advanced sensor cameras, and communication systems that allow it to transmit real-time data to operators. The system operates on a track-driven mechanism that provides stability and agility to traverse through the pipeline. The rover's design also includes a modular and lightweight structure that allows for easy deployment and transportation. The system can operate autonomously or can be controlled remotely by operators, providing greater flexibility in the inspection process.

Modeling and Analysis of a Reconfigurable Rover for Improved Traversing over Soft Sloped Terrains.

Adjusting the roll angle of a rover's body is a commonly used strategy to improve its traversability over sloped terrains. However, its range of adjustment is often limited, due to constraints imposed by the rover design and geometry factors such as suspension, chassis, size, and suspension travel. In order to improve the rover's traversability under these constraints, this paper proposes a reconfigurable rover design with a two-level (sliding and rolling) mechanism to adjust the body's roll angle. Specifically, the rolling mechanism is a bionic structure, akin to the human ankle joint which can change the contact pose between the wheel and the terrain. This novel adjustment mechanism can modulate the wheel-terrain contact pose, center-of-mass projection over the supporting polygon, wheel load, and the rover driving mode. Combining the wheel-load model and terramechanics-based wheel-terrain interaction model, we develop an integrated model to describe the system dynamics, especially the relationship between rover pose and wheel slippage parameters. Using this model, we develop an associated attitude control strategy to calculate the desired rover pose using particle swarm algorithm while considering the slip rate and angle constraints. We then adjust the sliding and rolling servo angles accordingly for slope traversing operations. To evaluate the proposed design and control strategies, we conduct extensive simulation and experimental studies. The results indicate that our proposed rover design and associated control strategy can double the maximum slope angles that the rover can negotiate, resulting in significantly improved traversability over soft sloped terrains.

A computational tool for conceptual design and optimization of planetary rovers

The design process of a Mars rover is driven by multiple design constraints, namely overall mass, power consumption and volume (dimensions). Various systems, such as mobility, manipulation, handling, power, thermal, communication, navigation, avionics and science instruments, together make a complete rover vehicle and they should function collectively to perform a given task. Each of the subsystems can be thought of as modular building blocks that are integrated together to form a fully functional rover vehicle. When approaching the design of such a vehicle, the designer should take into account of cross design dependencies existent between different subsystems and technology limitations. Performing any particular task, would lead to many design possibilities. Choosing the final design from many feasible solutions is arguably a daunting task. In order to make this process simple and convenient, as well as to understand the design non-linearity existing in this solution space, the authors have employed a systems engineering approach to develop a tool comprising subsystem models. The subsystem models comprise parametric and physics-based models. For designing suitable user-defined objectives, these models when integrated with Genetic Algorithm forms an effective tool to support design trade-offs during the conceptual design process. This integrated modeling and optimization approach is thought to be efficient in identifying rover system concepts.

Design and simulation of interplanetary lunar rover

Design and simulation of interplanetary lunar rover

An overview of the design and development of lunar rover (Chandrayaan-2) for space applications

The paper gives an brief overview of the design and development of lunar rover (Chandrayaan-2) for space applications. The Moon has always been the center of attention for mankind, more than any other heavenly body in More than any other heavenly body in the night sky, the Moon has long been the focus of human interest. The Moon has always presented mankind with a challenge to learn more about it and to marvel at its wonders because it bears the early history of the solar system. We can uncover the early evolution of the solar system and that of planet Earth by having a better understanding of the Moon. With the 2008 launch of the Chandrayaan-1 orbiter mission to the Moon, India's planetary exploration program was launched by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). India launched Chandrayaan-2, its second lunar exploration mission, nearly twelve years after its first lunar exploration mission. Chandrayaan-2, India's most technologically advanced aircraft, is on an unprecedented mission. The South Polar Region of the Moon will be studied by India's second lunar trip, which will draw on nearly ten years of scientific and Engineering advancement. A major accomplishment for both India and humanity, Chandrayaan-2 was the first mission ever to be sent to the southern pole of the moon. Both the high cold and constant darkness in this area make it extremely unsafe and have a bad impact on missions. India faced a tremendously difficult assignment as a result, and the entire world was interested in its outcome. Chandrayaan-1's eleven remote-sensing scientific instruments from ISRO, NASA, and ESA have made important discoveries, such as the identification of a water signature, the discovery of spinel minerals, lunar lava tubes, signs of recent volcanism, impact-triggered boulder movements, and the detection of sputtered atomic oxygen and backscattered helium on the lunar surface. Three components made up Chadrayaan-2: an orbiter, a lander, and a rover. 2019 saw the launch of this mission. During this mission, the Orbiter was successful in reaching the moon's orbit, but communication with the Lander was lost, which caused Lander to perform poorly and crash with the Pragyan rover and other scientific equipment. The work given here is a mini-project that is taken up as a part of the curriculum completed by electronics and communication engineering students in the second year of the electronics & communication engineering department at Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering in Bangalore.

Heterogeneous computing for low-cost robotic platforms

This study presents a novel approach to the design of cost-effective autonomous rovers using a heterogeneous computing architecture. The research focuses on the development and evaluation of an autonomous rover system, priced under $2 700 (USD), that can operate independently in various environments. The system’s performance was assessed in real-world conditions, demonstrating an average speed of 0.5 m/s, an energy consumption of 0.2 kWh, and a decision-making error rate below 5%. The results suggest that the use of heterogeneous computing architectures can lead to the development of affordable and efficient autonomous navigation systems. The paper concludes by discussing potential future research directions and the broader implications of these findings for the field of autonomous systems.

Effect of time-delay on lunar sampling tele-operations: Evidences from cardiac, ocular and behavioral measures

The purpose of this study is to quantify performance in human-robot interaction under time-delay conditions in a lunar tele-operations sampling task, by testing the hypothesis that an increase of time-delay would lead to higher perceived workload and lower human performance in human-robotic integrated operations. Tele-operation is key in the exploration of the Moon, and allows for robotic elements to be controlled from orbital infrastructure and other planetary bodies such as the Earth. Considering that future missions aim to control rovers (amongst others for sampling tasks) from Earth (delay: 3s), the Gateway (delay: 0.5s) and the Moon (delay: 0s), control under the time-delay conditions for these locations must be studied. Time-delay can affect performance, and understanding the performance means that mission operations can be planned bottom-up, which benefits both the preparation of the crew and the design of rovers. An experiment was conducted with 18 engineers who were assigned to control a robotic arm under three time-delay conditions, representing the three control locations. Several metrics were derived from cardiac, ocular, subjective and behavioral measures. The analyses disclosed that the large time-delay condition statistically increased the perceived workload, the time to complete the mission and decreased heart rate variability compared to the other conditions. However, no effect of time-delay was found on attentional and executive abilities. The metrics proved to be effective in the study of performance quantification in human-robot interaction for tele-operations in lunar control scenarios. This approach can be implemented for a larger range of robotic activities, such as tele-operated driving.

Design and Control of TAWL—A Wheel-Legged Rover With Terrain-Adaptive Wheel Speed Allocation Capability

This article presents the design, control, and implementation of a novel four-legged rover for planetary exploration. A novel active-passive coupled leg mechanism is proposed for the design of the planetary rover. Then, based on the design of the actuator and leg mechanism, the novel wheel-legged robotic system is developed. Furthermore, the kinematic model of the robot is established and then a kinematics-based control strategy is presented, incorporating roll-and-pitch control, contact force control, wheel speed allocation, and steering modules. Experiments are carried out on regular indoor terrain and irregular outdoor terrain. The variations of rover attitude angles and contact forces in regular terrain decrease by more than 90% and 60%, respectively. In the outdoor environment, rover attitude angles are regulated within 1 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">o</sup> and variations of contact forces are reduced by more than half. In addition, the proposed control strategy decreases the slippage on hard unstructured terrain by almost half. Finally, the robustness and failure responses of the robot are investigated, which are also verified by simulations and experiments.

Model Predictive Control of a Novel Wheeled-Legged Planetary Rover for Trajectory Tracking.

Amid increasing demands for planetary exploration, wide-range autonomous exploration is still a great challenge for existing planetary rovers, which calls for new planetary rovers with novel locomotive mechanisms and corresponding control strategies. This paper proposes a novel wheeled–legged mechanism for the design of planetary rovers. The leg suspension utilizes a rigid–flexible coupling mechanism with a hybrid serial–parallel topology. First, the kinematic model is derived. Then, a control strategy for the wheeled–legged rover that includes a trajectory tracking module based on the model predictive control, the steering strategy, and the wheel speed allocation algorithm is proposed. After that, three groups of cosimulations with different trajectories and speeds, and experiments are carried out. Results of both the simulations and experiments validate the proposed control method.

Multibody Model for the Design of a Rover for Agricultural Applications: A Preliminary Study

The employment of vehicles such as rovers equipped with automictic and robotic systems in agriculture is an emerging field. The development of suitable simulation models can aid in the design and testing of agricultural rovers before prototyping. Here, we propose a simulation test rig based on a multibody model to investigate the main issues connected with agricultural rover designs. The results of the simulations show significant differences between the two structures, especially regarding the energy savings, which is a key aspect for the applicability of a rover in field operations. The modular structure of the proposed simulation model can be easily adapted to other vehicle structures.