State Analysis and Emergency Control of Planetary Rover with Faulty Drive Wheel

Wheel failure is one of the worst problems for a planetary rover working on Mars or the Moon, which may lead to the interruption of the exploration mission and even the loss of mobility. In this study, a driving test of a planetary rover prototype with a faulty drive wheel was conducted, and state analysis and dynamics modeling were carried out. The drag motion relationship between the faulty drive wheel and the normal wheels on the same suspension was established based on the targeted single wheel test (faulty wheel-soil bin). In order to maintain the subsequent basic detection capability of the planetary rover, an emergency control system is proposed that integrates the path planning strategy with faulty wheel priority and the motion control method of correcting heading and coordinating allocation. The experimental results and emergency strategies of this study on simulating Martian soil and terrain can provide researchers with ideas to solve such problems.