Mobility performance evaluation of lunar rover and optimization of rocker-bogie suspension parameters

In order to provide a steady platform for scientific instruments, decrease the energy consumption, it is important to analyze and improve the mobility performance of lunar rovers. The mobility performance indexes are built based on four kinds of work conditions by summarizing the lunar surface terrain characteristics. The performance of overturning stability, load equalization of the wheels and trafficability are analyzed. The optimization mathematical model of the suspension parameters is established. Based on the sequence quadratic programming (SQP) algorithm, the optimal parameters of the suspension are obtained by taking the maximum energy consumption of motor and stationarity of mass center as the optimization objectives and overturning stability and trafficability parameters as constraints. The results indicate that the energy consumption of the motors, displacement and pitch angle of the mass center reduces significantly.