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Published March 2009 | Published
Book Section - Chapter Open

Wheel Design and Tension Analysis for the Tethered Axel Rover on Extreme Terrain

Abstract

As the Mars Exploration rovers have reaffirmed, some of the most interesting sites for scientists to explore on planetary surfaces lie in terrains that are currently inaccessible to state-of-the art rovers. We have been developing the Axel rover as a robotic platform to access steep and challenging terrain. We will summarize the recent mechanical upgrades since we introduced the tethered Axel concept last year.

Additional Information

©2009 IEEE. We would like to thank current and former members of the Axel team: Jeffrey Edlund for the design of the rover avionics, the development of its tele-operated control software and for his overall support to the project during the design and implementation phases; Dr. Srikanth Saripalli for the development of the vision capture software, Thomas Oliver for the development of the paddle wheels, Kevin Noertker for the development of the sampling device, Dan Helmick for mechanical design of the original Axel, Raymond Christian for machining the original rover, Nam Nguygen, Chun-Che Peng, Hung Tran and Ed Barlow for development of rasping devices and for mechanical and avionics upgrades. We would also like to thank former students: Damon Sisk, Isaac Vaughn, Samuel Irwin, Chad Kessen, and Lauren Lyons for their contribution to the hardware and software for the rover. Additionally, we would also like to express our sincere appreciation for our sponsors in the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate and Solar Systems Exploration program: Dr. Christopher Moore, Dr. Satish Khanna, Dr. Tsun Yee Yan, Dr. Jim Cutts, and Dr. Kim Reh. We would also like to acknowledge the support of Dr. Samad Hayati, Dr. Richard Volpe and Dr. Gabriel Udomkesmalee of JPL. This work is a joint collaboration between Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The work was done at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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Published - AbadManterola2009p83192009_Ieee_Aerospace_Conference_Vols_1-7.pdf

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Created:
August 20, 2023
Modified:
October 20, 2023