FABRICATION OF EIGHT-LEGGED ROBOTIC ROVER

A Rover is a robotic vehicle that propels itself across the surface of the planet Mars, used to explore the planet’s surface and geology. The robotic rovers face certain challenges, one of them being the difficulty in mobility. The current drive mechanism of the rover consisting of rocker-bogie mechanism allows the rover to move over obstacles of sizes twice the diameter of the rover’s wheels. But the Martian surface has lot of large rocks and boulders of sizes more than twice the diameter of the rover’s wheels, acting as obstacles to the rover. The rover finds it difficult to climb over these obstacles with its current drive mechanism of rocker-bogie and also suffers in stability to a certain extent whiling traversing over uneven and sloped surfaces. The present project aims to explore and implement design improvements to overcome these difficulties. In the project we focus on designing and fabricating a rover that would be able to climb heights greater than what the present models are capable of. Also, the design would enable the rover to possess greater stability while traversing over uneven surfaces and terrains where there is a negative slope and it achieves this without compromising on the strength of the whole structure of the rover.