Soft-landing control for a six-legged mobile repetitive lander

Abstract

The primary mode of extraterrestrial exploration is a robotic system comprising a lander and a rover. However, the lander is immovable, and the rover has a restrictive detection area because of the difficulties of reaching complex terrains, such as those with deep craters. In this study, a six-legged mobile repetitive lander with landing and walking functions is designed to solve these problems. First, a six-legged mobile repetitive lander and its structure are introduced. Then, a soft-landing method based on compliance control and optimal force control is addressed to control the landing process. Finally, the experiments are conducted to validate the soft-landing method and its performances. Results show that the soft-landing method for the six-legged mobile repetitive lander can successfully control the joint torques and solve the soft-landing problem on complex terrains, such as those with steps and slopes.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

six-legged mobile repetitive lander / soft-landing method / compliance control / optimal force control / complex terrains

References

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 92248303) and the Startup Fund for Young Faculty at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2024 Higher Education Press