Imagine the scene: you are driving your car when, at least an hour from the nearest help, one of your tires begins to lose air. Do not worry! You have a spare tire with the tools and knowledge to change it. And if that fails, you can call roadside assistance. But what if your car isn’t a car, has alloy wheels for which no parts are available, and the nearest help is 200 million miles away? You may be the JPL engineer for the Curiosity Mars Rover mission, which in 2017 was tasked with creating New driving algorithm designed to extend wheel life.
High performance crawler, courtesy Spidertrax.com Licence: CC BY 3.0You might say that the Curiosity Mars is the perfect all-terrain vehicle, and as such it has to handle conditions that are in some ways no different from some places here on Earth. Ground-restricted rock crawlers use long-travel suspensions, specialized transmissions and a locking differential to keep the tires on the ground and prevent loss of traction.
On Mars, the landscape is dominated by sand and rocks, and the rover must navigate around the worst. It is inevitable, like any all-terrain vehicle on Earth, that Mars rovers will occasionally spin a tire when they lose traction. The Mars rover also has a specialized propulsion system and a long-range suspension system. However, they don’t use differentials, so how can they prevent loss of traction and resulting damage from wheel spin? This is where the aforementioned traction control algorithm comes into play.
By controlling wheel spin with less traction, they can still aid vehicle movement while preventing rock blowouts. Be sure to check Excellent article on the JPL For a full explanation of their methodology and the added benefits of downloading new algorithms to control traction at 200 million miles! There is no doubt that the persistent rover on Mars has also benefited from this research.
But why should NASA have all the fun? You can join them by 3D print your own Mars rover And maybe some Drive wheels derive traction control. What a pleasure!