In the spring of 2019, the six-wheel Spirit Rover traveled back to drag an inoperable front right wheel when it seized the sandy sea surface. Despite spending months trying to excavate his robot, NASA could not free spirit. Now, engineers from the University of Wisconsin – Madison may have learned a way to better prepare NASA’s robots for extraterrestrial environments.
In a a Paper published in the Journal of Field Robotics, The engineers team used computer simulations to discover a missing element in the way NASA tests its rovers on the ground. Rather than just calculate the effect of gravity on the Rover prototypes tested on the ground, the engineers behind the recent study suggest that NASA overlooked Gravity’s pulling on the sand itself.
Gravity on Mars is significantly weaker than on Earth. To calculate the difference in gravity between Mars and Earth, NASA engineers test a light prototype of the Mars Rovers, who are around sixth of the mass of the robots sent to the Red Planet. The recent simulations, however, revealed that the gravity of the earth falls on sand much harder than on Mars or the Moon. As a result, the sand on the ground is much stiffer and less inclined to change under the wheels of the rover, while it tends to be more fluent on the moon.
“We need to consider not only the gravitational traction on the Rover, but also the effect of gravity on the sand to get a better picture of how the Rover will act on the Moon,” Dan Negrut, a professor of mechanical engineering at UW -Madison and chief author of the paper, said in A Statement.
The team behind the study stumbled on the missing piece of the puzzle while simulating the NASA’s Viper, or volatiles exploring Polar Exploration Rover, which was intended to launch to the moon this year before its mission was canceled. While simulating Viper’s mission, the engineers noticed discrepancies between lands based on the Rover prototype and physical-based simulations of the four-wheel robot on the moon.
The new findings suggest that rovers on extraterrestrial grounds, such as the moon or Mars, are more inclined to struggle with the wheels in the less cooperative sands. Something like this may have happened not only to a spirit, but also to NASA’s chance, who spent Weeks set in sand in 2005and curiosity that got Enclosed on soft terrain in 2014. Given how sand behaves under the lighter gravitational traction of other worlds, NASA can better prepare its robots for the harsh terrain forward.
