抄録
It is not easy for asteroid rover with wheels to move on the surface of asteroids because such an astral body has two special features. One feature is that there is no air and it induces vacuum metalizing of metal slide components. The other feature is that their quite small gravity induces bad controllability of rover with wheels which requires enough frictional force between ground and wheels. Therefore, it is preferable for rover to use jumping mechanism without metal slide component and with low energy consumption. In this paper, a jumping mechanism is proposed and the mechanism uses a energy which is stored by resonance of flexible part. However, simply giving resonance results in low height of jumping. Therefore, electrical stiffness switching system is implemented to realize a effective jumping. Electrical stiffness switching is realized by piezoelectric element and external capacitor which is connected to them. Two method of stiffness switching are introduced. One is stiffness hardening and the other is stiffness softening which solve the problem of stiffness hardening. To validate the proposed mechanisms, numerical analyses are carried out and feasibilities of application for asteroid rover are studied.
