Lunar Rover

This lunar rover is a tribute to the tradition of exploration beyond Earth. Based on past lunar and Mars rover designs and research (primarily NASA/JPL), our senior capstone design team designed and built a rover to explore the delicate balance between speed and stability.

Final Lunar Rover Report

Challenge

Per NASA's decadal survey, one of NASA's goals is to create a rover capable of quickly traversing the lunar surface to collect a wider variety of samples. In order to collect these samples with a single rover in a reasonable time frame, it must be capable of travelling at far greater speeds than present rovers, which generally travel at ~0.1 km/hr. Therefore, we focused on building a model lunar rover with increased speed.

Criteria and Constraints

The rover should have a minimum top speed of 1 km/hr.
The rover must be able to traverse tough lunar terrain without an irreversible event (i.e. flipping, falling, getting stuck, etc).
The lunar rover should be capable of travelling over or around inclines up to 20°, any obstacles that are 1/10th the rover’s height, a crater up to the depth of 1/10th the rover’s height, and even in fine sand.
While exploring the lunar surface, the rover must be capable of carrying an additional load of 21% of its total body weight.

My Focus: Wheels and Steering System

I focused on designing and fabricating the wheels and steering systems. Some key design consideration included:

Minimizing weight while maximizing functionality, utilizing 3D printing and plastic (vs. aluminum) when appropriate.
Maximizing steerability and obstacle avoidance. Each wheel was independently steerable, allowing for crab steering.
Maximizing the clearance between the electronics and the lunar surface. This allows for protection from potential damage due to contact with rocks/debris.
Minimizing vibration. Creating custom TPU wheels to absorb vibration and smoothen motion, minimized the transmission of disruptive forces from the surface to the rover.

Outside the wheels and steering system, our team created an active/passive combination suspension system and a unique mass distribution system to offset the risks of higher speeds.