Abstract
Sandy terrain can be seen in various environments. For instance, beaches and deserts, and the surface of other planets are covered by sandy soil. In these types of environments, investigational robots are usually equipped with wheel driving mechanism having some protrusions called lugs or grousers. However, because the lug's motion trajectory and soil deformation interact each other intricately, there is no theory that support the relationships between generated forces and soil deformation or lug's moving trajectory. Therefore, in this study, we isolate the lug from the wheel and focus on a single lug. Based on experiments, the prediction models of generated forces are built and demonstrated the validity as a prediction equation.
