Team Angelicum Chile
Alicanto Mission
Universidad Austral de Chile Puerto Montt
Universidad de Concepción Concepción
Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción - Concepción

Hello everybody!! Since a while, Team Angelicum can announce that 3 Universities from Chile have joined and working full in the areas of Robotics, Orbit Mechanics and Mission Analysis and SW, Informatics

Here we are sharing with you the fruits of a bit more than one month!!

Rover Analysis – First Report.

Currently, the Angelicum team is researching different robotic rovers for the mission. The rover must fulfill the following requirements:

- Light, Light, Light, and then ...even lighter.
- Small size as possible.
- Strong enough to handle space and mission dangers (launch, vibrations, g-forces, moon landing, moon surface, temperature, radiation, etc.).
- At least minimum Google X-Prize requirements (HD video, 500mt travel, rover->lander communications, and so on).
- Traction system according to moon surface (very raw).
- Must be able to be drive turned or have the ability to turn up in case of tip over (is just too risky if not and there are designs that allow it, so is worth to try it).
- Design must allow potential incorporation of additional components/characteristic in case of bonus missions.

After looking at previous moon and mars rovers missions designs, info from other teams, the internet and into our imagination, we select 2 designs that have what we need:
1.- GOAT (Carnegie Mellon University):

Pros:
- There is already a working prototype that shows what is possible with the design.
- Simple.
- Strong design

Cons:
- 5 or 6 moving parts (more moving parts, more risk).
- It require several movements to pass over an obstacle, which is difficult in a remote mission (hard to pass throw an obstacle by itself).

2.- Dandelion (Angelicum Team):

Pros:
- Simplest and light shape, 1/3 of a standard 6 wheeled rover (probably one of the simplest shape possible beside a sphere).
- Legged-Wheels (Lheels?), are semi-flexible (not articulated or expandable), allow a better traction and "accommodation" to rocks and raw surface (smoothest travel)
- Legged-Wheels can protect from impacts and also act as antennas.
- Simple, elegant and original.

Cons:
- Legged-Wheels need a very specific material/components to be flexible/bendable and strong enough.
- Un-tested prototype, concept art so far
- Need a little more power to break inertia (no problem if it has the right weight and traction power using low moon gravity).
- Design depends heavily into have the right weight to take advantage of the 1/6 of earth gravity of earth on the moon to kind of "float" over the surface.
- Need a balance system. About this is worth to mention that is not as difficult as the one from nBot or Segway, since each Legged-Wheel have 2 points of contact with the surface in any time, acting as a “four legged tripod”. Anyway, it can simple auto-balance with the right weight and gravity (to risky), or as the nBot/Segways (too complex for what is need but still possible), probably something in between.
- The required size of the wheel can limit the amount of space for solar panels.

Most of Dandelion cons can be avoided and answered with a simple mechanical prototype that we are going to build, and if is worth, the pros are very interesting to give it a try.

The Angelicum team is going to try booths selected designs up to November, from a raw design with dimensions, materials and components, and also from prototypes point of view to get real data.

Most of the current rovers for space exploration are based in a 6-wheeled design, this include the first mars rover soujorney, the spirit and opportunity and the upcoming curiosity.
This design has proved to be able to successfully navigate in irregular surfaces with many obstacles of different size, like in mars or the moon.
Nevertheless, for us this design has some problems. It usually require a large size and heavy rover, which also mean extra weight, it have many moving part, adding risks to the mission, is kind of a fragile design and also is not able recover from a tip over.
Still, we chose it as our fallback design.