A Study of Driving a Loose Slope by Using Swarm-Rovers with Expansion and Contraction Mechanism

Abstract

Some organizations, such as NASA, plan to explore the moon with a lot of small-sized rovers called swarm robots. A wheel-typed vehicle has a risk of stuck. Fortunately, a collaborative movement of swarm robots could solve the problem. This paper proposes a collaborative movement, which utilizes shear stress of the wheels, for traversing a loose slope and evaluates its performance. The results suggested that the proposed movement can traverse a higher loose slope than the normal traveling.