Study on traversability with consideration of wheeled forms for lunar and planetary exploration rovers

In future planetary exploration missions, planetary robots are required to traverse over very rough terrain. On the lunar surface, there are covered with soils which are named regolith. Regolith is easy to slide. Any stack is easy to occur to the rovers which are running on the regolith. The mechanism, which occurs stacks, is not yet clear. Therefore, this paper investigates the kinematics behavior of lunar rovers with tire-soil traction mechanism. This traction mechanism shows two important parameters for running wheel on regolith. One is the effect of hardening. And the other is the effect of shearing. New wheel forms are designed by considering these effects. Some experiments using the proposed wheels are performed to observe the performance of traversability. Analysis of experimental results shows that to combine these two effects is effective.