Free Spirit: Next Step: Combinations of Basic Moves

July 22, 2009

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Mars Exploration Rover team members on July 21, 2009, tested how altering the order in which individual wheels turn for steering affects how those turns dig the wheels deeper into soft soil. From left: Alfonso Herrera, Vandana Verma, Bruce Banerdt.

As the Mars rover team uses testing at JPL to evaluate possible ways to drive Spirit out of loose soil on Mars, the team is finishing tests of individual "building block" maneuvers and is about to begin stringing some of those together.

The individual maneuvers, such as turns in place or crablike slant moves, may be combined to get Spirit's wheels away from the spots where they have sunk into the soil. Some of the tests in a JPL sandbox simulating Spirit's predicament have moved the test rover slightly -- on the order of a centimeter, or half an inch, of shift in position.

This position change was achieved after enough wheel turns to have driven the rover the equivalent of tens of meters or yards on firmer ground. The testing evaluates how each maneuver shifts the test rover's orientation and tilt.

A live webcast from the testing site at JPL, supplemented by simultaneous Internet chat to take public questions, is planned for Thursday, July 23. The live event will air on the "NASAJPL" channel available on Ustream Web TV at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasajpl on Thursday, July 23, beginning at 3 p.m. PDT (6 p.m. EDT and 2200 UTC).

Provided by JPL/NASA (news : web)

• VOR - Jul 23, 2009
  • Rank: not rated yet
  guess they will give subsequent rovers more tire area, lol. and/or add walking ability to legs. I hope so anyway, geez. this is what original testing was for.
  Too late to play blame game (and I havnt heard it being officially played) but truth is somebody goofed and underdesigned this aspect.
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