Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : June 01, 2022 - June 04, 2022
The Mars Exploration Rover will travel over the surface of Mars to acquire detailed topographic data and collect samples. However, the Martian surface is covered with fine sand called regolith, which prevents the rover from following the target path accurately and causes it to get stuck. Therefore, the rover must have high performance on rough terrain. In addition, the rover must be lightweight because it is transported by a rocket, and the mechanism must be simple to prevent failure due to regolith. Therefore, a passive steering mechanism using springs is proposed, and the effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed by driving experiments.
