WHEEL DESIGN

The wheel has a male thread on the outside so it can unscrew itself from the rocket body. The wheels also act as a collection method. Each thread segment is hollow and can act as a scoop so the rover can collect the granular ice simulant. Finally the wheels act as, well, wheels they give the rover the mobility it needs to traverse whatever terrain it encounters after landing. The geometry of these wheels make them impossible to manufacture using traditional manufacturing methods but luckily we have access to 3D printers which allow us to expand our designs beyond what's possible with traditional designs.

ELECTRICAL DESIGN

The electrical design of the rover is also streamlined. Using an o-drive motor controller and X-Bee communication module, we eliminated the need for a micro-controller. Our communication module was able to talk directly to the motor controller. Because we only had two motors this meant we didn't need to have a micro-controller on the rover at all. This design was sadly only a prototype as we opted to design and build a drone instead of this rover. We did this so we could incorporate a vision processing system into our payload.