Authors:

Aditya Arjun Anibha

Date Created:

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Course Title:

Professor:

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About Paper:

Extraterrestrial planetary exploration is a pertinent challenge for humanity's expansion into space. The return and first ventures of humans to the Moon and Mars raise an urgent demand for advanced technologies and exploration systems to facilitate long-term and successful settlement on extraterrestrial planetary bodies. Traditional rover designs can only access a limited range of environments and locations. It is crucial to create a sustainable, efficient, inexpensive, and adaptable autonomous system to support human exploration across many surfaces. This project develops a planetary exploration robot with multiple locomotive modes to achieve this goal. It is supplemented by the unique properties of 3D printed origami patterns, such as the cylindrical bellow Yoshimura to create a compressible, lightweight, and flexible structure. Multiple origami patterns and designs were manufactured using 3D-printing technology for easy production. Tests across the desired locomotive abilities were conducted to assess the robot's capabilities. Mathematical modeling and numerical methods were used to determine critical factors for performance improvement. A tension-based actuation mechanism using strings reeled in by servos was used with autonomous obstacle navigation algorithms to enable mobility. The resultant product has a broader range of locomotive modes at a human scale than previous origami robots and is robust and compatible with space missions. This study demonstrates the feasibility of developing an autonomous origami robot that can transform across multiple locomotive modes to adapt to most potential environments and surfaces. The design approach outlined in this project establishes an improved precedent for future methodologies to develop versatile robotic exploration systems.

Source:

Purdue University / 2023

Topics:

No topics listed

Co-authors:

Aditya Arjun Anibha