Soil Sampling on an Extreme Terrain Rover: A Pneumatic Device
- Creators
- Holtz, Kristen
Abstract
A key problem in rover exploration missions is that many of the scientifically interesting areas to investigate are extremely difficult to access given typical flat-topography rovers. The Axel rover was designed to rappel down steep cliffs using a tether held securely at the top. It is very important that this rover is capable of taking and analyzing samples of soil on Mars. Goals for such a sampling mechanism are to collect a sample of at least 2 grams and store it, and to repeat this. The system developed here is a preliminary system that takes one sample and stores it using a pneumatic device. A pneumatic approach was chosen due to its simplicity, as minimal actuation will be needed to move soil. This design can be easily integrated with a multi-sample system later on. Tests to maximize soil collection were done to choose a design for the system, and this design will be implemented on Axel soon to test its effectiveness. This work was done in conjunction with another SURF student.
Additional Information
I would like to thank Yifei Huang, a fellow Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship student who did this work with me. I thank Professor Joel Burdick and Melissa Tanner for all of their guidance and assistance, as well as the entire Axel team at Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I thank Kris Zacny from Honeybee Robotics for all of his help and the design for the cyclone separator. In addition I thank the Keck Institute for Space Studies as well as the SURF office, which provided funding for this project. I also would like to thank Professor Melanie Hunt for her advice and the use of her sand, as well as Professor Tim Colonius for his advice.Attached Files
Submitted - soil.pdf
Files
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md5:a51ad831d40b628837394028bddbc657
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 64817
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20160226-150111573
- Caltech Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF)
- Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS)
- Created
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2016-03-06Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2019-10-03Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Keck Institute for Space Studies