A novel rigid–flexible link combined lunar sampler and its basic dynamics and control

Lunar surface sampling is a critical technology for lunar exploration, involving in-situ analysis or sample return missions. In this paper, a lunar sampler with the novel mechanical structure is developed, which is mainly composed of three rigid links and one flexible link. By adopting the flexible link, the sampler has some significant merits compared with other conventional samplers, e.g., a small shrinking volume and a large working space. The flexible dynamic model is built for the novel sampler by using the virtual work principle and mode reduction method to analyze its dynamic behavior, and the linear quadratic control model is successfully introduced and applied to control the flexible link. At last, the simulation is carried out and a special mechanism is used to verify the correctness of the dynamic model and the effectiveness of the control method. The sampling experiments show that the flexible sampler is qualified to finish the sampling tasks.