Robot Mobility Systems for Planetary Surface Exploration – State-of-the-Art and Future Outlook: A Literature Survey

Mobile robots have been an essential element of space exploration to perform science on distant lunar and planetary objects. Past orbiter missions to Moon have shown evidence on the presence of ice inside the permanently shadowed polar areas. Similarly, Mars holds clues of life in the distant past. While data sent by orbiters provides a wealth of information and gives rise to new speculations and theories, in-situ science data from mobile rovers and landers is essential to validate or confirm them. “Mobility” is a vital element for a space missions due to valuable science return potential from different sites as opposed to static landers. Over the years, technology development has given rise to numerous mobile systems. Some of the systems are spin-offs from terrestrial applications like automobiles that use wheels, military tanks that use tracks and aerial balloons. Others have been developed purely for space application like hoppers and hybrid systems. Since 1970s, twelve surface missions have reported using mobile robots. Most of them used wheels as their mobility element for locomotion. Since surface space-exploration of planetary objects across the solar system has gained increasing importance in recent years, it is important to understand the state-of-the-art in mobile robotics and the technology development of the mobility system in particular. This need will be addressed in this chapter.