Design and simulation of a four-wheeled rover for enhanced lateral stability

Ever since the onset of robotics, there has been a huge demand for all-terrain rovers that can operate in unstructured ground conditions. One of the major challenges for all-terrain rovers while traversing uneven ground conditions is to maintain longitudinal and lateral stability of their platform while maximizing their terrainability and minimizing actuation input for stabilization. In this paper, the conceptual design of a novel four-wheeled rover based on the DUNE rover architecture has been presented. An analytical model of the proposed rover is formulated in MATLAB to quantitatively compare the stability and mobility performance metrics on multiple terrain conditions with that of the conventional DUNE rover design. A multibody dynamic simulation of the proposed design is also performed in Msc.ADAMS to validate the analytical model. In comparison to the DUNE rover architecture, the proposed design utilizes only a single rotary actuator to maintain a more uniform distribution of wheel grip on the terrain through a reduced wheel load deviation. It also exhibits a significant increase in the stability margin and stabilizes the chassis roll angle in uneven terrains which have net non-zero lateral slopes.