Abstract:
The lunar exploration project of China is underway, and a lunar rover will be developed and launched onto the lunar surface in the next step. In order to verify the reliability and diverse functions (such as landing impact, autonomous navigation and tele-operation) of the rover, an experimental facility for the lunar rover development is needed. Based on the knowledge of the lunar surface environment and the existing simulation technology, this paper presents a scheme for realization of an integrated experimental facility for the lunar rover development. It is well known that the lunar environment is very tough and the moon geological feature is complicated. A kind of knockdown simulator for the lunar surface environment is suggested. The main part will include various mobile units, each of which simulates a kind of lunar surface topography in different dimensions, such as craters, hills, and ravines. One unit is one grid of small size in a sand table, which serves as the simulated lunar soil, with chemical compositions, particle size distributions, and engineering properties similar to the true lunar surface. According to the requirement of a certain kind of test, corresponding units or grids are selected and a test bed is assembled, which dynamically simulates a terrain on the lunar surface in a limited area. At the same time, a relative fewer units can be chosen to assemble a smaller test bed, which can be used together with other existing environmental simulators (for example, vacuum container, dropping tower) as an integrated environmental simulator.
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