Abstract:

To meet the needs of future missions such as manned landing, material transfer and base building in the field of deep space exploration, a buffering/walking integrated hexapod lander is proposed, and its gait planning and simulation is completed. Firstly, the mechanism of lander and the functions of energy absorbing/driving integrated buffer are introduced. Secondly, a kinematics model of the UP+2UPS with 3 DOF cantilever leg foot mechanism is established. The inverse kinematics of the UP based kinematic chain is derived. The mapping from the rotation motion of the UP based chain to the telescopic motion of the 2UPS branch chain is derived, and the lander’s workspace is analyzed. Thirdly, the walking and turning gaits are designed, and the relationship between the walking trajectory of the leg end and the telescopic trajectory of the joint driving is derived. Finally, a virtual prototype model of the lander is established to verify the motion stability of the leg foot mechanism and the walking stability of the lander gait. The results indicate that the proposed lander leg foot mechanism moves smoothly, and the lander walks with small undulations, small excursions and high stability margin. It provides a viable equipment solution to tasks such as stable landing, mobile detection, material transfer and base building in a complex star catalog environment in the future.

Key words: Buffering/walking, Hexapod lander, Kinematics, Gait planning