Citation

Ibrahim AN, Aoshima S, Shiroma N, Fukuoka Y. Sensors (Basel) 2016; 16(9): s16091507.

Affiliation

Department of Intelligent Systems Engineering, College of Engineering, Ibaraki University, Hitachi 316-8511, Japan. yasuhiro.fukuoka.phd@vc.ibaraki.ac.jp.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/s16091507

PMID

27649196

Abstract

Typical rovers equipped with conventional grousers (devices intended to increase the traction of continuous tracked vehicles, especially in loose material such as soil or snow. This is done by increasing contact with the ground with protrusions, similar to conventional tire treads, and analogous to athletes' cleated shoes. )are prone to getting stuck in unconsolidated sandy dune inclines as the wheels tend to sink into the sand. This phenomenon is caused by the motion of the grouser through the sand during the latter half of the rotation, in which the grouser pushes the sand from underneath the wheel upwards and towards the backside of the wheel. This creates a space that the wheel can sink into. To minimize sand movement and subsequent sinkage, we propose the concept of using an "assistive grouser", which is attached to the side of a conventional rover wheel. The assistive grouser is designed to be able to autonomously maintain a uniform angle relative to the rover body independent of the rotation of the wheels. Rotating the wheel causes the assistive grousers to automatically penetrate into the sand slope surface at a constant angle of attack, thereby acting as an anchor and providing traction for the wheel. Maintaining a uniform grouser angle as opposed to a rotating motion also assists in extracting the grouser out of the sand without moving the sand towards the back of the wheel. Moreover, the angle of the assistive grousers is held constantly by a single dedicated motor, meaning that the angle of the assistive grousers can be optimized to provide the least amount of sinkage for each slope angle. The experimental results showed that for slope angles of 0-30 degrees, the rover equipped with the proposed assistive grousers experienced significantly less sinkage and consumed less current compared to the rover equipped with conventional grousers.

Language: en