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Software for Modelling and Analysis of Rover on Terrain

Published: 04 July 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Wheeled rovers traversing soft terrain are subjected to extensive testing to determine the slope climbing limits, obstacle limits, steering limits and drive torque/power requirements. To understand the wheel soil interaction and reduce the number of tests, simulation software enabling virtual runs of the rover on soft soil have been developed by Space agencies worldwide. In the present work, simulation software is developed to model the rover-soft terrain interaction. The tool is capable of generating uneven terrain, defining mechanical properties of soil, modelling obstacles and wheel interaction on soft terrain, providing skid steering for given turn radii, slip feedback to model rover motion and includes the effect of grousers on rover performance. The software coding is based on terramechanics theory, simplified to reduce computation and is implemented in FORTRAN using ADAMS/Solver. The modeling of rover is carried out with ADAMS/View which is used for preprocessing, extracting the wheel terrain contact forces and post processing. Matlab is used for generating the Triangular Irregular Network from the terrain coordinates which are used in the model to generate the terrain geometry. Using this simulation software performance of a low mass four wheeled lunar rover is estimated on flat/inclined terrain, straight/turning maneuvers, obstacle climbing and contingency situation involving motor failure. In this paper, the details of mathematical modelling and software development are presented along with the performance parameters obtained for aforementioned cases.

References

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Dimitrios S. and Apostolopoulos. 2001. Analytical Configuration of Wheeled Robotic Locomotion. PhD Thesis. The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg University, Pennsylvania, April 2001.
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Gaurav Sharma, Srividhya, G., Shamrao, Balaji, K., Nagesh, G., and Sridhara, C.D. 2011. Performance evaluation of wheeled rover by analysis and test. In Proceedings of Nacomm-2011, IIT Madras, Nov 30-Dec 2, 2011, pp. 456--462.
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Michaud, S., Richter, L., Patel, N., Thuer, T., Joudrier, L., Siegwart, R. and Ellery, A. 2004. RCET: Rover Chassis Evaluation Tools. In Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Advanced Technologies for Robotics and Automation (The Netherlands, November 2--4, 2004). ASTRA '04, ESTEC, Noordwijk.
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Nildeep Patel, Alex Ellery, Elie Allouis, Martin Sweeting, and Lutz Richter. 2004. Rover mobility performance evaluation tool (RMPET): A systematic tool for rover chassis evaluation via application of Bekker theory. In Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Advanced Technologies for Robotics and Automation (The Netherlands, November 2--4, 2004). ASTRA '04, ESTEC, Noordwijk.
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Aesco Soft Soil Tyre Model. User's Guide, Version 1.12, AESCO GbR, Hohenkamp 35, Hamburg, Germany, 2005.
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Robert Bauer, Tim Barfoot, Winnie Leung, and Gita Ravindran. 2008. Dynamic Simulation Tool Development for planetary rovers. International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems. Vol. 5, No. 3 (2008), pp.311--314.
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Jonathan Cameron, Abhi Jain, Terry Huntsberger, Garett Sohl, and Rudranarayan Mukherjee. 2009. Vehicle-Terrain Interaction Modeling and Validation for Planetary Rovers. JPL Publication 10--15, Aug-2009, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.
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J.Y. Wong. 2010. Terramechanics & Off road vehicle engineering, Terrain behavior, off road vehicle performance and design. Second edition 2010, Butterworth-Heinemann, U.K.
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Genya Ishigami. 2008. Terramechanics based analysis & control for lunar/planetary exploration robots. PhD. Thesis. Tohoku University, March 2008.
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Wong, J.Y. and Reece, A.R. 1967. Prediction of rigid wheel performance based on the analysis of soil-wheel stresses, Part-1: Performance of driven rigid wheels. Journal of Terramechanics. 1967, Vol-4, No. 1, pp.81 to 98, Pergamon Press Ltd.
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Gaurav Sharma, Sidharth Tiwary, Suresha kumar, H.N., Nagesh, G, and Sridhara, C.D. 2012. Rover mobility performance evaluation on variable soil properties. In Proceedings of ARMS-2012 (Pune, India, Dec 5--7, 2012). ARDE, Pune.
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Shibley, H., Iagnemma, K. and Dubowsky, S. 2005. An equivalent soil mechanics formulation for rigid wheels in deformable terrain with application to planetary exploration rovers. Journal of Terramechanics. 42 (2005) 1--13.
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Kazuya Yoshida and Genya Ishigami. 2004. Steering characteristics of a rigid wheel for exploration on loose soil. In IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Sep, 28-Oct 2, 2004, Japan.
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Genya Ishigami, Akiko Miwa, and Kazuya Yoshida. 2005. Steering Trajectory analysis of planetary exploration rovers based on all wheel dynamics mode. In 8th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space. iSAIRAS', Munich. Germany, 5--8 Sep, 2005.
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Cited By

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  • (2024)An improved robotic arm constant force control method for forward terrain sensing system on planetary roversInternational Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems10.1177/1729880624130588321:6Online publication date: 22-Dec-2024
  • (2022)An Instrumented Wheel-On-Limb System of Planetary Rovers for Wheel-Terrain Interactions: System Conception and Preliminary DesignProceedings of the 2022 2nd International Conference on Robotics and Control Engineering10.1145/3529261.3529278(96-101)Online publication date: 25-Mar-2022
  • (2020)Modelling of Robotic Single Peg-In-Hole Assembly Using ADAMS/MATLAB Co-simulationIOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering10.1088/1757-899X/995/1/012008995(012008)Online publication date: 15-Dec-2020

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cover image ACM Other conferences
AIR '13: Proceedings of Conference on Advances In Robotics
July 2013
366 pages
ISBN:9781450323475
DOI:10.1145/2506095
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 04 July 2013

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Author Tags

  1. Rover
  2. mathematical modelling
  3. simulation software
  4. wheel soil interaction

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  • Research-article
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AIR '13
AIR '13: Advances In Robotics 2013
July 4 - 6, 2013
Pune, India

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Overall Acceptance Rate 69 of 140 submissions, 49%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)An improved robotic arm constant force control method for forward terrain sensing system on planetary roversInternational Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems10.1177/1729880624130588321:6Online publication date: 22-Dec-2024
  • (2022)An Instrumented Wheel-On-Limb System of Planetary Rovers for Wheel-Terrain Interactions: System Conception and Preliminary DesignProceedings of the 2022 2nd International Conference on Robotics and Control Engineering10.1145/3529261.3529278(96-101)Online publication date: 25-Mar-2022
  • (2020)Modelling of Robotic Single Peg-In-Hole Assembly Using ADAMS/MATLAB Co-simulationIOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering10.1088/1757-899X/995/1/012008995(012008)Online publication date: 15-Dec-2020

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