Mobility performance evaluation of planetary rovers in consideration of different gravitational acceleration

In order to evaluate mobility performance of roving vehicles on natural terrain of the other planets, a number of running tests on the Earth have to be carried out in consideration of the difference of gravitational acceleration. In this paper, the authors focus on the analysis with similarity models and experimental study to take the difference of gravity into account. The authors introduce two similarity models of the planetary rovers for 1G or 1/2G gravity experiments, respectively to examine the similarity law itself and the performance of the mobility systems. This paper presents the experimental results for both low-gravity flight tests by the airplane and the tests on the ground.