Bouncing Motion and Path Planning of Small Body Surface Rover

Abstract

To address the problem that wheeled mobile rovers are difficult to adapt to the weak gravitational environment of small bodies. The jumping mode of the rover with cubic configuration was analyzed. A single-step bouncing strategy was proposed to exploit its barrier-crossing capability. At the same time，a variable-step A* algorithm was proposed to plan the surface movement path of the rover. The simulation results show that the rover can effectively cross the obstacles. The new algorithm reduces the path nodes and is more efficient for high-density obstacle terrain.

Keywords

small body defense / surface bouncing / path planning