Title :
Comprehensive Locomotion Performance Evaluation of All-Terrain Robots
Author :
Thueer, Thomas ; Krebs, Ambroise ; Siegwart, Roland
Author_Institution :
Autonomous Syst. Lab., Swiss Fed. Inst. of Technol., Zurich
Abstract :
Information about the locomotion performance of known rovers is sparse. A comprehensive evaluation of wheeled passive systems is presented in this work. It is based on a static 2D approach that includes optimization of the wheel torques in order to minimize the required friction which is an important performance metric. The evaluation comprises well known rover concepts and new suspension systems. The performance of the systems is compared and interesting effects of some concepts are discussed in more detail including torques and load distribution. The rovers MER (NASA) and CRAB (EPFL) show good performance which is topped only by the eight wheeled DoubleSpring system
Keywords :
mobile robots; planetary rovers; suspensions (mechanical components); torque; wheels; CRAB rover; MER rover; all-terrain robots; eight wheeled DoubleSpring system; locomotion performance evaluation; suspension system; wheel torques; Actuators; Analytical models; Friction; Intelligent robots; Measurement; Mobile robots; NASA; Orbital robotics; Remotely operated vehicles; Wheels; All-Terrain Robots; Locomotion Systems; Robot Design; Rover; Space Robotics;
Conference_Titel :
Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2006 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Beijing
Print_ISBN :
1-4244-0258-1
Electronic_ISBN :
1-4244-0259-X
DOI :
10.1109/IROS.2006.281954