Abstract
Lunar rovers are required to move on rough terrains such as in craters and rear cliffs where it is scientifically very important to explore. In the past, wheel typed rovers are popular for planetary exploration missions. However, there is a problem that the wheel typed rovers have possibility of stack. Therefore, this paper investigates a mechanism of kinetic behavior between the wheels of the exploration rovers and soil. The important parameters are extracted by considering the mechanism. This paper proposes an elastic wheel by considering the important parameters. The elastic wheel has the surface of large area contacting with soil continuously. Running Experiments on simulant are carried out to observe the traversability of the elastic wheel using slip ratio and sinkage.
