Following Movement Control of Cooperative Planetary Rover on Soft Terrain Based on Double Virtual Springs Strategy

With the continuous development of planetary surface exploration, the cooperation of planetary rovers has become a potential solution to complete complex and intelligent tasks. The soft terrain and complex environment of the planetary surface also bring difficulties to the satisfaction of the movement and coordination accuracy of planetary rovers. This paper proposes a mobile control strategy based on double virtual springs strategy. The cooperative planetary rover motion model and virtual spring model are established. This method can be applied to the follower planetary rover to realize the following movement of the leader planetary rover according to the cooperative planning. The designed controller was deployed on the rocker-bogie planetary rover prototype, and variable speed test and multi-terrain test were carried out on the simulated planetary terrain. The experimental results show that the mobile control method can effectively improve the relative position and attitude accuracy of the follower planetary rover, and can provide technical support for the development of the cooperative mission.