Flawed Tests on Earth May Explain Why NASA’s Rovers Get Stuck on Mars

In the spring of 2019, the six -wheeled SPIRIT ROOR company was leading back to withdraw an non -operating front wheel when it stumbled on the surface of the sandy Mars. Although the months are eliminated in an attempt to drill her robot, NASA could not freedom. Now, engineers from the University of Wisconsin – Madison have discovered a way to better prepare NASA robots for environments outside the planet.

In a paper published in Journal of Field Robotics, The Engineers team used computer simulations to detect a missing element in the way NASA tests on the ground. Instead of just calculating the effect of gravity on the initial models that are tested on the ground, engineers who are behind the recent study indicate that NASA has ignored the gravity of gravity on the sand itself.

Gravity on Mars is much weaker than Earth. To calculate the difference in gravity between Mars and the Earth, NASA tests a lightweight preliminary model of Mars preservatives, which is about the sixth mass of robots sent to the Red Planet. However, the recent simulations revealed that the gravity of the Earth is receiving the sand with a much greater force than Mars or the moon. As a result, the sand on Earth is more solid and less likely to shift under the wheels of the rover, while it tends to be more amazing on the moon.

“We need to look not only in gravitational clouds on Rover, but also the effect of gravity on the sand to get a better image of how to perform the Rover on the moon,” said Dan Negut, a UW -MADISON engineering professor and newspaper author in a statement.

The team behind the study stumbled on the missing part of the puzzle while simulating the NASA snake, or the volatility that was investigated in the polarity, which was supposed to launch the moon this year before canceling its mission. While simulating VIPER, engineers noticed a difference between the ground tests of the initial model ROOR and the physics -based simulation of the four -wheeled robot on the moon.

The new results indicate that Rovers on the terrain outside the planet, such as the moon or Mars, is likely to struggle to put its wheels in the less complex sand. There may be something like that not only for the soul but also for the NASA Rover opportunity, which spent weeks stuck in the sand in 2005, and the curiosity, which decreased in the soft terrain in 2014. By thinking about how sand behaves under the lighter attractiveness of other worlds, NASA can better prepare its robots for harsh terrain.