Trajectory Analysis and Modeling on Longitudinal/lateral Traversing of Slope Terrain for Planetary Exploration Rover

For a planetary exploration rover, the trafficability is affected by a variety of factors, such as ground hardness, slippage, slope angle on terrain, and so on. In this paper, we focus the development of an analysis model of multi-body dynamics, which consists of forces acting on each wheel based on a wheel and terrain interaction, and a rover dynamics model. From the proposed analysis model, the dynamic behavior for planetary exploration rover on the various inclined terrain during the longitudinal and lateral traversing is predicted. Moreover, we investigate the influence of the steering configuration and load distribution used for the compensation strategies on inclined deformable terrain. These simulation results imply that the appropriate compensation strategy should be adopted so that the rover successfully traverse slope terrain and achieve path following tasks.