<title>Steering and control of a passively articulated robot</title>

Abstract

The need for light weight yet highly mobile robotic platforms is driven by the limitation of available power. With unlimited energy, surface exploration missions could survive for months or years and greatly exceed their current productivity. The Sun-Synchronous Navigation project is developing long-duration solar-powered robot exploration through research in planning techniques and low-mass robot configurations. Hyperion is a rover designed and built for experiments in sun-synchronous exploration. This paper details Hyperion's steering mechanism and control, which features 4-wheel independent drive and an innovative passively articulated steering joint for locomotion.