A NOVEL TERRAMECHANICS TESTBED SETUP FOR PLANETARY ROVER WHEEL- SOIL INTERACTION
2009
For planetary rovers, demonstration of the overall mobility performance on soft soil is a demand to guarantee for
mission success. Since several years, DLR’s Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics is strongly engaged in planetary
mobile system developments. For the very important wheel-soil interaction a 3D-MBS tool for modeling and simulation
of the overall terramechanics behavior, making use of Bekker’s well-known terramechnical equations, has been
developed. Currently, major applications are followed within ESA’s Exomars mission. For the purpose of verification
and validation of the 3D-MBS tool intensive hand in hand rover testing in a lab environment is necessary. Therefore,
a new facility for planetary locomotion systems including a large testbed and a novel, high-precision bevameter to
characterize the soil on which the tests are to be carried out is presented. For precise rover pose estimation inside the
testbed a high-level position tracking system is used, and for proper soil surface determination on an in-house developed
digital elevation mapping system is relied on. For the Bekker parameter determination, a portable and lightweight
bevameter equipped with a state-of-the-art sensor technology is designed. Different design concepts are analysed
open minded without any orientation on existing bevameter designs. This leads to a tripod design with electromechanical
actuators and sensors integrated in a real-time computing environment to develop own control algorithms.
Besides soil testing and soil preparation influence detection, the bevameter is mainly used for identifying soil parameters
of the testbed. Finally, for correlation purposes, these parameters are taken as inputs to the 3D-MBS tool for simulating
the drive manoeuvres performed inside the testbed. Results obtained from bevameter testing are presented together
with the testbed setup design.
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