A new dimension design method for the cantilever-type legged lander based on truss-mechanism transformation

摘要

The cantilever-type legged lander (CTLL) is widely used in many extraterrestrial exploration activities, owing to the good buffering stability, large support stiffness, and excellent payload capacity. The paper will focus on the following two important and challenging aspects for its optimum dimension design: (1) One is to build a reliable and comprehensive optimization design model for the CTLL, including the optimization parameters of the topological structure, the performance indices of the landing behavior, and the constraint conditions of both landing stability and workspace; (2) The other aspect is to develop a systematic strategy to optimize both landing leg and overall lander respectively based on the optimization design model above. The paper proposes the trussmechanism transformation method (TMTM) to optimize the truss structure of the CTLL in the view of mechanisms and robotics with kinematics and dynamics characteristics. Furthermore, the design space dimensionality reduction method (DSDRM) is proposed for the multi-parameter optimization problem and develops the performance-chart based design methodology (PCbDM) as well. The paper can help one understand the relationship between different dimensions and the corresponding performances, and obtain the global optimum dimensions for both landing leg and overall lander. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.