Mobile Robot resembling NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover. Everything from scratch and open-source including mechanical design, electronics, and software. The end goal of this project is to gain experience with mobile robotics concepts including SLAM, state estimation, and dynamic environment navigation.
This project is currently in progress and I'm currently focusing on the drive-base with the following tasks:
- Building a Kalman Filter focusing on the kinematic model of a 6-wheel Mars Rover
- I have also implemented kinematic models for diff-drive, mecanum, and skid-steering for the educational value.
- Creating a data-driven layout for the physical robot, focusing on the important features such as: rocker-bogie assembly, rocker-bogie differential system, and the 4 independently steered wheels.
- Architecting the ROS2 package to easily fit sensors and modularize the filter.
Creating a PPO RL training pipeline for a simplified mobile robot and goal pose navigation- Working on firmware for motor board (RoverFirmware)
- Designing Battery Management System (BMS) and working on firmware required for battery monitoring
This plot was generated with draw_rocker_bogie.py
A lot of the math expressions aren't rendering correctly and can best be visualized by viewing the markdown render locally in an IDE (VS Code). It's a work in progress to create SVG images for each equation and display them once they are finalized...
Simulated Teleoperation in pygame with ackerman steering, try it out by running rover_teleop.py in prototyping/!
- Path Following using Visual Odometry for a Mars Rover in High-Slip Environments
- Feature-Based Scanning LiDAR-Inertial Odometry Using Factor Graph Optimization
- Autonomous robotics is driving Perseverance rover’s progress on Mars
- A Friction-Based Kinematic Model for Skid-Steer Wheeled Mobile Robots
- Kalman Filter Overview
- Ghost IV — Sensor Fusion: Encoders + IMU
- Design of Rocker-Bogie Mechanism
- The Challenges of Designing the Rocker-Bogie Suspension for the Mars Exploration Rover
- Design and Fabrication of six wheels Rocker Bogie Mechanisms
- Understanding and Making Rocker-Bogie System