A Vehicle Dynamics Test Facility For Planetary Surface Mobility

Abstract

Future exploration missions pose demanding requirements towards access by vehicles to scientifically interesting sites on planetary surfaces. Driving requirements stem from the need of more flexibility in site selection, improved payload to vehicle mass ratios and higher mission success probabilities. This applies to the touchdown of landing vehicles as well as to the surface operations of roving vehicles. The determination of relevant load cases and requirements verification is a mandatory step in systems development. To achieve dynamically similar loads on the test vehicle on earth as could be expected on the planetary targets of these vehicles several test principles exist with varying suitability for each test case. These are in particular tests with scaled models following certain laws of similarity or actively weight offloaded tests with (in the ideal case) unscaled vehicles. In order to support the design, development and test of exploration vehicles, the DLR Institute of Space Systems has deployed a new test facility which supports these different principles. The key element of this facility is a standard 6-axis industrial robot as it is typically known from factory automation applications. The main reason for using an industrial robot is to provide a fully active, self supporting and in the use cases highly flexible device for setup and maintaining load scenarios and test object handling. The test ground is given by a soil bin with dimension of 10x4m, containing the planetary soil simulant. A section of 4x4m is designed as a tiltable ramp and can be adjusted to simulate slopes. This paper describes the test cases und underlying working principles as well as the technical realisation of this facility. Results from the test, verification and simulation of the facility will be shown.