Design, implementation and experimental tests of a new generation of Antarctic rover

Abstract

The Arctic and Antarctic, as the harshest environments on the earth, are of great importance to the nation. The extreme environments can be harmful, even fatal, to human beings and mobile robots. To execute missions on the Antarctic in place of human, the State Key Laboratory of Robotics of Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences has designed three generations of Antarctic rovers. The hardware and software design and implementation of the third generation of Antarctic rover, which has been tested on the Antarctic during the 28th Chinese National Antarctic Research Expedition in 2011, will be presented in this paper. The preliminary experimental results, as introduced in the last part of the paper, suggest that the design and implementation of the hardware and software system can ensure efficiency and reliability of the rover working on the Antarctic.