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Active Gravity Offloading System With Infrared Tracking For Rover Testing, Travis Wavrunek
Active Gravity Offloading System With Infrared Tracking For Rover Testing, Travis Wavrunek
Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports
Gravity offloading is a tool used to test how different gravitational forces will impact the mobility of rovers bound for Lunar or Martian expeditions. Previous approaches have been successful in simulating partial gravity environments, and this report details how the Infrared- Gravity offload (IRGO) system, developed for the Planetary Surface Technology Development Laboratory (PSTDL) and lunar simulant sandbox, has a similar aim. Through a series of iterations, IRGO has been developed to actively track an infrared beacon and follow a rover within the test chamber to eliminate inertial and friction forces along two horizonal axes. A portion of a rover’s …