Conceptual Design of a Robotic Ground-Aerial Vehicle for Mars Planetary Exploration

摘要

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2022-3285.vid This paper seeks to study key technical barriers that preclude the development of novel robotic ground-aerial vehicles (RGAVs) for exploration missions to Mars prior to human arrival and establishment of a base. The concept for RGAVs for Mars planetary exploration is new, and will require innovations that are at various stages of development or use by the aerospace community. In the context of a basic mission, RGAVs are envisioned to: (i) perform a powered takeoff and climb to a suitable altitude, (ii) use a combination of hyper-spectral sensors and computer vision to recognize features of interest on the surface of Mars while surveying the topography, (iii) initiate a descent and landing maneuver, and (iv) engage in ground navigation, sample collection, and analysis. In contrast to an aerial orbiter, this RGAV employs a hybrid ground-aerial vehicle approach where the vehicle collects ground samples, analyzing soil composition, and records land topography while in flight. The RGAV concept will utilize inflatable wing technology, however in this preliminary study the computational aerodynamic analysis performed on OpenVSP assumes a rigid wing operating at a cruise Mach number of 0.65. A non-linear adaptive control system is proposed for the longitudinal aerial dynamics and a proportional, integration, derivative (PID) controller is outlined for the ground roving lateral dynamics.