Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : May 10, 2017 - May 13, 2017
Lunar/planetary exploration rovers struggle to travel on loose soil. For appropriate traveling of rovers on actual environments, it is needed not only to understand the wheel–soil interaction but also to estimate their wheel performance precisely. For this purpose, we developed a synthetic sensing wheel system that estimates wheel sinkage/slippage and soil reaction force/torque. We designed the system, so that enable to utilize for each wheel of rovers. A time-of-flight camera was used for wheel sinkage/slippage estimation, and a 6-axis force/torque sensor was built in the wheel to detect the soil reaction force/torque. Experimental results showed that proposed system was able to estimate the wheel sinkage/slippage and reaction force/torque online.
