Study On Simulation Platform Of Lunar Rover Based On ADAMS

The research of lunar rover is in the need of the development of lunar exploration project. As a pioneer landing on the Moon, Lunar rover is an important component of the project and also an essential important medium at the start stage of the lunar exploration.With the development of the space exploration plan, many domestic universities and graduate colleges have carried out the project design and prepared for the lunar rover/planet exploration robot. The Intelligent Vehicle Group of Jilin University has developed the first and the second generation lunar rover since 2004. Because there are a lot of requisitions to the lunar rover reliability , and we also take account of the particularity of the environment in which the lunar rover works ,we must take experiment and improvement through and through to the lunar rover .With the development of the technology of virtual reality, designer could simulate any complex environment in computer, build all types of lunar rover models, make kinematics and dynamics simulation analysis to the models rapidly, economically and effectively , which plays an important role in testing ,evaluating and improving the lunar rover model design. By applying the simulation technology we can compare and optimize all sorts of design plan, which could short circle time, save the expenses and improve the feasibility. In this case simulation technology has been the essential part of the study on lunar rover, even the lunar exploration project. So in order to provide our group's lunar rover with virtual simulation environment, and finish the program with Chinese Research Institute of Space Technology, we must make study on the simulation platform of the lunar rover. According to the first-mentioned background and the need of the group, a design means to lunar rover simulation platform based on ADAMS was advanced. The paper introduced this design program, analyzed the simulation platform's scale, characteristic and feasibility, and designed the whole structure of the platform. On the basis of the secondary development on ADAMS the lunar rover simulation platform software was designed and achieved, and the friendly man-machine interface was also developed, then the function of the simulation platform was tested. The test result showed that this platform could make simulation analysis to a variety of operating conditions such as differential speeds rotation, anti-roll capacity ,and climbing the obstacle capacity forward as wall as backward .After the simulation ,the platform could output the parameters'result in graphic form such as the lunar rover body's pitching angle, transverse angle and roll angle, at the same time ,the platform could broadcast the simulation results for many times which could also be made to video.In order to simulate the 3D (short for three-dimension) real environment of the lunar surface, this paper built the cloud-dot data information acquisition system for the lunar rover's forward 3D environment, which was based on the LMS-Z210 laser scanner , then finished the 3D discrete cloud-dot data collection in Chinese Research Institute of Space Technology's lunar soil environment simulation center. In the principle of the reverse project, the paper adopted the point-liner-face technology achieved the rebuilding of the lunar rover's forward real environment with the Imageware software, and finished the 3D rebuilding environment's solid model in the third software UG , then imported the solid modeling to ADAMS, in which the simulation analysis to the lunar rover in the 3D rebuild environment was made. In the course of rebuilding, a further study on the basic principle of the B-Spline curve-fitting and the achievement of cubic mean B-Spline curve interpolation algorithm was finished, and the curve-fitting of cross-section linear cloud-dot and mesh processing to the 3D cloud-dot data was developed with Matlab, which laid the theory fundament on developing the lunar rover 3D real environment modeling in future.Because there are disadvantages in rebuilding the 3D environment based on the reverse project principle, so the paper presented a directly drawing 3D rebuilding real environment method based on VTK. It mainly explained VTK algorithm principle and the Visualization achievement stages of VTK 3D environment rebuilding ,and realized 3D real environment rebuilding based on VTK by programming in the platform of the Visual C++ .At last, the paper presented the progress and conclusion on the lunar rover simulation platform, pointed out the further study direction on improving it, and outlooked its future development.