Pages 259-260
Future planetary exploration missions will require rovers to travel wide range effectively and perform difficult tasks safely in rough terrain. The surface of the moon is covered by soft and slippery material called regolith. So the drive of rovers involve risk of stack, which makes it impossible to move forward by digging the soil with wheel rotating. A lot of conventional motion planning and control algorithms do not consider the physical characteristics of the rover and its environment, which limit their effectiveness in rough terrain. However the interaction between a wheel and the soil is one of the most important factors for considering the mobility of rovers. A lot of the mechanism remains unclear and the conclusive model of their interaction is not established. In this paper, the results of the foundamental experiments of a wheel drive on luna soil simulant are presented. The traction control as a stack avoidance method is also mentioned.
