Velocity kinematics based control of rocker-bogie type planetary rover

Kinematics of space rovers has been studied by several past researchers. However most studies assume that all the wheels of the rover is always in contact with the terrain. As the lunar terrain is very uneven and contains ash, dust, rocks, etc this assumption need not always be valid. Hence in this study we have analyzed the kinematics of a rover in which one wheel can loose contact with the ground or slide. The model considered in this paper is a bicycle model of the rover with an assumption that the yaw angle would be negligible and thus the results give us a fair insight of 3-D modeling of rovers. A quasi static analysis of the robot was used to develop a slip control chart that guides the amount of slip expected while traversing different terrains.