Design of Rocker Bogie Mechanism

Abstract:

Rocker bogie are important for conducting in-situ scientific analysis of objectives that are separated
by many meters to tens of kilometers. Current mobility designs are complex, using many wheels or
legs. They are open to mechanical failure caused by the harsh environment on Mars. A four wheeled
rover capable of traversing rough terrain using an efficient high degree of mobility suspension
system. The primary mechanical feature of the rocker bogiedesign is its drive train simplicity, which
is accomplished by using only two motors for mobility. Both motors are located inside the body
where thermal variation is kept to a minimum, increasing reliability and efficiency. Four wheels are
used because there are few obstacles on natural terrain that require both front wheels of the rover
to climb simultaneously. A series of mobility experiments in the agriculture land, rough roads,
inclined, stairs and obstacles surfaces concluded that rocker bogiecan achieve some distance
traverses on field.

I. INTRODUCTION

Over the past decade, the rocker-bogie suspension design has become a proven mobility application
known for its superior vehicle stability and obstacle-climbing capability. Following several technology
and research rover implementations, the system was successfully flown as part of Mars Pathfinder’s
Sojourner rover. When the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Project was first proposed, the use of a
rocker-bogie suspension was the obvious choice due to its extensive heritage. The challenge posed
by MER was to design a lightweight rocker-bogie suspension that would permit the mobility to stow
within the limited space available and deploy into a configuration that the rover could then safely
use to egress from the lander and explore the Martian surface [4]. When building a robot you'd like
it to be as simple as possible. In most cases you'd never need a suspension system, but there were
several instances when a suspension system cannot be avoided. The term “bogie” refers to the links
that have a drive wheel at each end. Bogies were commonly used as load wheels in the tracks of
army tanks as idlers distributing the load over the terrain. Bogies were also quite commonly used on
the trailers of semi-trailer trucks. Both applications now prefer trailing arm suspensions.The rocker-
bogie design has no springs or stub axles for each wheel, allowing the rover to climb over obstacles,
such as rocks, that are up to twice the wheel's diameter in size while keeping all six wheels on the
ground. As with any suspension system, the tilt stability is limited by the height of the centre of
gravity.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW

NASA developed the rocker-bogie suspension system for their rovers and was implemented in the
Mars Pathfinder's and Sojourner rover. The rocker-bogie suspension system passively keeps all six
wheels on the robot in contact with the ground even on uneven surfaces. This creates for great
traction and manoeuvrability (Harrington & Voorhees). The rocker-bogie suspension mechanism
which was currently NASA’s approved design for wheeled mobile robots, mainly because it had
study or resilient capabilities to deal with obstacles and because it uniformly distributes the payload
over its 6 wheels at all times. It also can be used for other purposes to operate in rough roads and to
climb the steps. It was having lots of advantages but one of the major disadvantages is the rotation
of the mechanism when and where is required. The rotation can be possible by providing individual
motors to individual wheels which causes arise in cost and complicacy in design. Here an attempt
was made to modify the existing design by incorporating a gear type steering mechanism which will
be operated by a single motor which simplifies the design as well as the total cost and operating cost
of the mechanism. In this work the proposed steering mechanism was designed and the modeling
was done in CATIA (V-5) and the same was analyzed for static analysis for the proposed torque
condition of the motor in ANSYS. All the results in the analysis were analyzed for static analysis [1].
The researchers discusses the concept and parameter design of a Robust Stair Climbing Compliant
Modular Robot, capable of tackling stairs with overhangs. Modifying the geometry of the periphery
of the wheels of our robot helps in tackling overhangs. Along with establishing a concept design,
robust design parameters were set to minimize performance variation.

The robot prototype was shown to have successfully scaled stairs of varying dimensions, with
overhang, thus corroborating the analysis performed [2]. An analysis method to make the rocker
bogie mechanism can climb up a stair was achieved in the work. The east coast of Malaysia faced a
massive flood from heavy downpour, leading to huge flood damage and caused irreparable loss to
life and property. The flood carries the debris, soil and trees along their path, damaging the road and
building structure, leaving the road become uneven. This situation gives difficulty to task force
bearing aids during the post disaster management. The research paper proposed an intelligent
inclined motion control of an amphibious vehicle while moving on uneven terrain surface [3].

The research paper deals with the designing and modeling of stair climbing robot based on the well-
known rocker bogie mechanism in Ansys rigid body dynamics module. The robots often suffer from
undesired phenomenon slip, sticking and floating while climbing steps and stairs, which may cause
instability of the mobile robot. The Taguchi method was used to chosen as an optimization tool to
make trajectory of center of mass close to straight line while all wheels keep in contact with ground
during climbing stairs. Taguchi method was adopted due to its simplicity and cost effectiveness both
in formulating the objective function and satisfying multiple constraints simultaneously. In the
Optimization, Seven kinematic parameters of rocker bogie mechanism were optimized which include
four link lengths (l1, l2, l3) and three wheel radius (R1, R2, R3). The kinematic Model of proposed
mechanism was built and it was simulated in ANSYS Rigid body dynamics. Three different shapes of
typical stairs were selected as user conditions to determine a robust optimal solution.The result
obtained shows the variation of center of mass position with time, variation of velocity of joint with
time, variation of force with time [5]. It was basically a suspension arrangement used in mechanical
robotic vehicles used specifically for space exploration. The rocker-bogie suspension based rovers
has been successfully introduced for the Mars Pathfinder and Mars Exploration Rover (MER) and
Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) missions conducted by apex space exploration agencies throughout
the world. The proposed suspension system was currently the most favored design for every space
exploration company indulge in the business of space research. The motive the research initiation
was to understand mechanical design and its advantages of Rocker- bogie suspension system in
order to find suitability to implement it in conventional loading vehicles to enhance their efficiency
and also to cut down the maintenance related expenses of conventional suspension systems [6]. The
world market of mobile robotics was expected to increase substantially in the next 20 year,
surpassing the market of industrial robotics in terms of units and sales.

The optimization of a particular suspension system known as the “rocker-bogie” for our Mars Rover.
This type of mechanism has beenused on most of the rovers on Mars and has proved to be a simple
and elegant design.A GeneticAlgorithm was implemented and used to optimize the geometry and
kinematics of the rover’swheel suspension system subject to the defined performance metrics. This
work shows the effectiveness of the optimization of a rocker-bogie suspension systemusing a
Genetic Algorithm. It also reveals that the resulting system meets all constraints andthat significantly
reduces the error of individual performance metrics and the overall system.It was shown that the
overall fitness of the rover suspension system can be increased by anaverage of 28% after 100
iterations compared to an initial guess. All performance metricsdefined were improved significantly
throughout the optimization.The method can be applied to different types of rovers in order to
optimize the wheelsuspension mechanism’s geometry [8].

III. DESIGN OF ROCKER BOGIE

The important factor in manufacturing of rocker bogie mechanism is to determine the dimensions of
rocker and bogie linkages and angles between them. The lengths and angles of this mechanism can
be changed as per requirement. In the work aim is to manufacture the rocker bogie mechanism
which can overcome the obstacles of 150 mm height (like stones, wooden blocks) and can climb over
stairs of height 150 mm. Also another target is to climb any surface at an angle of 45˚. To achieve the
above targets we had design the rocker-bogie model by assuming stair height 150 mm and length
370 mm. Using Pythagoras theorem, find the dimensions of the model. It have both angles of
linkages are 90˚.

A. Design calculation The objective of the research work is stair climbing. To achieve proper stair
climbing the dimensions of linkages should be proper. Assume the stair height and length 150 mm
and 370 mm respectively. To climb stairs with higher