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Rover

Technical details

Chassis y Rocker Bogie


  • This is a type of suspension developed by NASA and adapted by us.
  • It allows the vehicle to climb over obstacles (rocks, steps, etc.) up to twice the diameter of the wheels while keeping the chassis level and all six wheels on the ground.
  • It is mainly composed of square carbon fibre tubing and aluminium couplings.

Wheels Honey Comb


  • It adds cushioning, improves traction and reduces system weight.
  • Its design was the result of detailed terrain analysis and static and dynamic tyre simulations.
  • The design was developed using additive manufacturing with thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU).

Robotic Arm


  • It has 6 degrees of freedom and a maximum reach of 0.8 m.
  • The arm is mainly composed of folded sheet metal geometries, carbon fibre panels and 3D printed ABS plastic.
  • The design focuses on dexterity and uses high-torque stepper motors.
  • For economical but effective feedback, the angular position of each joint is calculated using analogue potentiometers.
  • The position and velocity of the end-effector are calculated from joystick movements via inverse kinematics. Work is in progress to automate this.

Electronic Box


  • This is the brain of the Rover.
  • Its architecture is unique and uses hardware programming.
  • For low-level control: A DE0-Soc FPGA is used.
  • For high-level control: An NVIDIA: Jetson TX2 Developer Kit is used, which processes all the control signals that the Rover must follow through a serial channel.

Control & Automation


Control: The rover uses the ROS operating system to segment the tasks to be performed and generate the actions that the rover should follow.

Automation: Work is being done on route planning algorithms as high-level control and a low-level Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) controller.

Vision


  • The rover has 3D Intel Realsense: Tracking and Depth cameras as well as other RGB cameras to locate the rover in space.
  • The odometry from the cameras is used to improve the rover's location and route planning.

Scientific Analysis


  • We have multiple types of sensors to measure physical quantities such as temperature, humidity, among others.
  • All measurements and images taken by the cameras are part of a database that we are designing.