Simulation of the Robotic Lunar Prototype MIRA3D

The Moon becomes more and more interesting. For the coming years, several new missions are planned and the idea of a Moon Village is not just science fiction anymore. As Jan W¨ orner consistently emphasises, the Moon offers a lot of opportunities. For example, it could be our listening post to outer space or our gateway to deep space missions [1]. To make it possible to implement such a complex mission, robotic systems such as the lunar robotic prototype MIRA3D are indispensable. Since tests with robotic systems, especially tests on autonomous vehicles, require great effort and bring a high risk for the hardware, proper simulations of the system have to be investigated. This paper describes the challenges and opportunities a simulation of a system like MIRA3D offers and gives an insight into the procedure of developing the necessary components.