A Comparative Study of the Deformation of Planetary Soils under Tracked and Legged Rovers

摘要

Wheeled micro-rovers, typically between five and thirty kilograms, suffer inherent losses in traction when subjected to the fine, granular soils such as lunar regolith. Bekker theory, the method of benchmarking the trafficability of a soil based terrain, allows for the evaluation of vehicle mobility performance via non-empirical methods. In order to investigate the effects of soil deformation on vehicles of interest, the authors have developed several soil simulator programs reproducing Earth-based soil modeling carried out in laboratories and validated against empirical experiments preformed in labs around the world. Through these software packages and experimental investigations on several micro- and nano-rover designs, a comparative analysis between tracked and legged vehicle performance on planetary surfaces has been conducted.