Abstract
Exploring the water-rich surface of Europa is a desirable planetary exploration objective for the coming decades. Knowledge of the Europan terrain is relatively uncertain and therefore to perform mobile surface operations a versatile mobility system capable of adapting its locomotion is desirable. Our work summarizes preliminary efforts to evaluate a variety of wheel-on-limb mobility modes on Europan analogue terrain populated with unstructured salt-evaporite formations. A redundant wheel-on-limb quadruped, RoboSimian, has been adapted to perform traverses over unstructured terrain with obstacles up to 50 cm tall (1.6 times its wheel diameter). Multiple mobility modes that are combinations of wheeled and limbed motion primitives are proposed and evaluated over varying roughness terrain as a function of energy usage. In combination with these mobility modes, a mode-agnostic actively articulated suspension control scheme that maintains ground traction, regulates chassis orientation and prevents suspension saturation is presented. The controller uses an inverse kinematics solver that leverages pre-computed lookup-tables for each limb. This is shown to be simple yet effective in the field and is able to scale to a robot with 32 degrees-of-freedom.
©2019. California Institute of Technology.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Arvidson, R.E., Iagnemma, K.D., Maimone, M., Fraeman, A.A., et al.: Mars science laboratory curiosity rover megaripple crossings up to sol 710 in Gale Crater. J. Field Rob. 34(3) (2017)
Bajracharya, M., Maimone, M., Helmick, D.: Autonomy for mars rovers: past, present and future. Computer (2008)
Buratti, B., Golombek, M.: Geologic implications of spectrophotometric measurements of Europa. Icarus 75(3) (1988)
Collins, G., Nimmo, F.: Europa, chap. Chaotic Terrain on Europa, pp. 259–281. The University of Arizona Press (2009)
Cordes, F., Kirchner, F., Babu, A.: Design and field testing of a rover with an actively articulated suspension system in a Mars analog terrain. J. Field Rob. (2018)
Greeley, R., Sullivan, R., Klemaszewski, J., Homan, K., et al.: Europa: initial Galileo geological observations. Icarus 135(1) (1998)
Hand, K.P., et al.: Europa lander study. Tech. Rep. JPL D-97667, NASA JPL (2016)
Hobley, D.E.J., Moore, J.M., Howard, A.D., Umurhan, O.M.: Formation of metre-scale bladed roughness on Europa’s surface by ablation of ice. Nat. Geosci. 11(12) (2018)
Karumanchi, S., Edelberg, K., Baldwin, I., Nash, J., et al.: Team roboSimian: semi-autonomous mobile manipulation at the 2015 DARPA robotics challenge finals. J. Field. Rob. 34(2) (2016)
McCord, T.B., Hansen, G.B., Fanale, F.P., Carlsen, R.W., et al.: Salts on Europa’s surface detected by Galileo’s near infrared mapping spectrometer. Science (1998)
Reid, W., Pérez-Grau, F.J., Göktoğan, A.H., Sukkarieh, S.: Actively articulated suspension for a wheel-on-leg rover operating on a Martian analog surface. In: IEEE ICRA (2016)
Satzinger, B.W., Lau, C., Byl, M., Byl, K.: Tractable locomotion planning for RoboSimian. Int. J. Rob. Res. 34(13) (2015)
Townsend, J., Biesiadecki, J.: Sliding gait algorithm for the all-terrain hex-limbed-terrestrial explorer (ATHLETE). In: ASME DSCC (2012)
Townsend, J., Biesiadecki, J., Collins, C.: ATHLETE mobility performance with active terrain compliance. In: IEEE AeroConf (2010)
Wettergreen, D., Moreland, S., Skonieczny, K., Jonak, D., et al.: Design and field experimentation of a prototype lunar prospector. Int. J. Rob. Res. 29(12) (2010)
Wilcox, B.H., Litwin, T., Biesiadecki, J., Matthews, J., et al.: ATHLETE: A cargo handling and manipulation robot for the Moon. J. Field Rob. 24(5) (2007)
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the National Parks rangers at Death Valley for their guidance in operating in the Death Valley National Park. The research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. ©2019. California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this paper
Cite this paper
Reid, W. et al. (2021). Actively Articulated Wheel-on-Limb Mobility for Traversing Europa Analogue Terrain. In: Ishigami, G., Yoshida, K. (eds) Field and Service Robotics. Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, vol 16. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9460-1_24
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9460-1_24
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-15-9459-5
Online ISBN: 978-981-15-9460-1
eBook Packages: Intelligent Technologies and RoboticsIntelligent Technologies and Robotics (R0)