Kinematic modeling of terrain adapting wheeled mobile robot for Mars exploration

Wheeled robot movement over unstructured terrain is usually referred to as roving. A primary target for a roving mission is surface reconnaissance and survey for in-situ data collection. Planetary roving is a direct way of exploring Mars, and allows Earth based scientists to directly contact the rock and soils on the planet. This paper discusses the kinematics and mechanical design aspects of one such unique rover configuration for Mars exploration. Individual transformation matrices are developed concatenating the various joints, and a forward kinematics solution is used to develop wheel Jacobians, and a composite rover solution which is used to determine rover heading and position estimation. The current rover configuration is compared with contemporary rovers, where necessary.