• Current Industrial and Technological Trends in Aerospace
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.27-34
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• 2008

One of the purposes of space exploration is to be able to utilize the unlimited natural resources in the universe. For this purpose, plans for lunar and mars bases have been proposed by leading nations. In order to construct bases and search for resources, it is necessary to employ and develop rovers for surface navigation and exploration. With proper knowledge about Lunar surface, technology for lunar rover development can be established without serious obstacles, since robot technology for rover development has been well prepared in Korea. In this paper, lunar rovers and mars rovers developed and planned by other countries as well as the current status of robot technology in Korea have been analyzed.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.437-444
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• 2020

A lunar rover's optical camera is used to provide navigation and terrain information in an exploration zone. However, due to the scant presence of atmosphere, the Moon has homogeneous terrain with dark soil. Also, in extreme environments, the rover has limited data storage with low computation capability. Thus, for successful exploration, it is required to examine feature detection and matching methods which are robust to lunar terrain and environmental characteristics. In this research, SIFT, SURF, BRISK, ORB, and AKAZE are comparatively analyzed with lunar terrain images from a lunar rover. Experimental results show that SIFT and AKAZE are most robust for lunar terrain characteristics. AKAZE detects less quantity of feature points than SIFT, but feature points are detected and matched with high precision and the least computational cost. AKAZE is adequate for fast and accurate navigation information. Although SIFT has the highest computational cost, the largest quantity of feature points are stably detected and matched. The rover periodically sends terrain images to Earth. Thus, SIFT is suitable for global 3D terrain map construction in that a large amount of terrain images can be processed on Earth. Study results are expected to provide a guideline to utilize feature detection and matching methods for future lunar exploration rovers.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.693-703
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• 2017

Rover wheel's mobility depends on soil's condition and wheel's design. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of soil conditions, which are Jumunjin sand and Korean lunar soil simulant (KLS-1), on wheel's motion performance. The experiments were performed by using a single wheel testbed with a wheel which grouser height is 15mm on Jumunjin sand and KLS-1, respectively. Also the influence of grouser length to wheel's mobility performance was studied. The experimental results of torque, drawbar pull and sinkage relating to slip ratio were discussed and analyzed to evaluate wheel's motion performance. Results showed wheel moving on KLS-1 has high performance than Jumunjin sand. Wheel's mobility performance was influenced by soil's properties of cohesion and frictional angle. In addition, wheel's performance of drawbar pull and Torque increased with the increasing of grouser length.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.140.2-140.2
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• 2009

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.677-692
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• 2009

In recent years, lots of studies on the planetary rover systems have been performed around space advanced agencies such as NASA, ESA, JAXA, etc. Among the various technologies for the planetary rover system, the mobility system, navigation algorithm, and scientific payload have been focused particularly. In this paper, the conceptual design for a ground-based model of planetary rover's mobility system to evaluate mobility and moving stability on ground is presented. The status of overseas research and development of the planetary rover systems is also addressed in terms of technical issues. And then, the requirements of the planetary rover's mobility system are derived by means of considering mobility and stability. The designed rover's mobility system has an active suspension with 6 legs that controls 6 joints on the each leg in order to achieve high stability and mobility. This kind of mobility system has already applied to the ATHELE of NASA for various purposes such as transportation and habitation for human lunar exploration activities in the near future (i.e., Constellation program). However, the proposed system has been designed by focusing on the small-sized unmanned explorations, which may be applied for the future Korea Lunar exploration missions. Therefore, we expect that this study will be an useful reference and experience in order to develop the planetary exploration rover system in Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.32 no.11
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• pp.97-108
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• 2016

Lunar rover plays an important role in lunar exploration. Especially, performance of rover wheel related to interaction with lunar soil is of great importance when it comes to optimization of rover's configuration. In this study, in order to investigate the motion performance of lunar rover's wheel on Korean Lunar Soil Simulant (KLS-1), a single wheel testbed was developed and used to carry out a series of experiments with two kinds of wheel with grousers and without grousers which were used to perform the experiments. Wheel traction performance was evaluated by using traction parameters such as drawbar pull, torque and sinkage correlated with slip ratio. The results showed that the single wheel testbed was suitable for evaluation of the performance of wheel and rover wheel with grousers which was likely to have higher traction performance than that without grousers in Korean Lunar soil simulant. The experimental results could be utilized in verification of the optimum wheel design and effectiveness of wheel traction for Korean lunar rover.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.1-8
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• 2023

Space exploration is at the forefront of human scientific endeavors, and planetary exploration rovers play a critical role in studying planetary surfaces. Rover performance is especially vital for safely navigating steep terrain and delicate landscapes found on planets like Mars and the Moon. This paper offers a comprehensive overview of a landing testbed designed to simulate challenging extraterrestrial terrain and loose regolith. The paper briefly outlines lunar crater region topographical features and highlights the importance of these simulations in rover testing. It then explores previous landing testbed developments and describes the design process for a landing testbed to be installed in the dirty thermal vacuum chamber at the Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology. Once realized, this proposed landing testbed will enable precise evaluations of rover mobility and exploration capabilities under lunar-like conditions, including high vacuum and extreme temperatures.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.45 no.10
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• pp.836-843
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• 2017

In lunar exploration, the necessity of utilizing rover is verified by the examples of the Soviet Union and China and the similar Mars missions of the United States. In order to achieve the successful management of a lunar rover, a high precision navigation technique is required, and accordingly, high precision initial alignment is essential. Even though it is general to perform initial alignment in a steady state, a multiposition alignment technique is applied when high performance is needed. On the lunar surface, however, the performance of initial alignment decreases from that on Earth, and it cannot be improved by applying multiposition alignment method owing to certain constraints of lunar environment. In this paper, a sun sensor aided multiposition alignment technique is proposed. The measurement model for a sun vector is established, and its observability analysis is performed. The performance of the proposed algorithm is verified through computer simulations, and the results show the estimation performance is improved dramatically.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.479-486
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• 2018

In order to ensure reliable navigation performance of a lunar exploration rover, navigation algorithms using additional sensors such as inertial measurement units and cameras are essential on lunar surface in the absence of a global navigation satellite system. Unprecedentedly, Visual Odometry (VO) using a stereo camera has been successfully implemented at the US Mars rovers. In this paper, we estimate the 6-DOF pose of the lunar exploration rover from gray images of a lunar-like terrains. The proposed algorithm estimates relative pose of consecutive images by sparse image alignment based semi-direct VO. In order to overcome vulnerability to non-linearity of direct VO, we add adaptive motion prior weights calculated from a linear function of the previous pose to the optimization cost function. The proposed algorithm is verified in lunar-like terrain dataset recorded by Toronto University reflecting the characteristics of the actual lunar environment.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.741-749
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• 2022

Major space agencies are planning for the rover-based lunar exploration since water-ice was detected in permanently shadowed regions (PSR). Although sunlight does not directly reach the PSRs, it is expected that reflected sunlight sustains a certain level of low-light environment. In this research, the indoor testbed was made to simulate the PSR's lighting and topological conditions, to which low light enhancement methods (CLAHE, Dehaze, RetinexNet, GLADNet) were applied to restore image brightness and color as well as to investigate their influences on the performance of feature extraction and matching methods (SIFT, SURF, ORB, AKAZE). The experiment results show that GLADNet and Dehaze images in order significantly improve image brightness and color. However, the performance of the feature extraction and matching methods were improved by Dehaze and GLADNet images in order, especially for ORB and AKAZE. Thus, in the lunar exploration, Dehaze is appropriate for building 3D topographic map whereas GLADNet is adequate for geological investigation.