Publications

Version: 1.1 Approved

LDO-ID 2018-04-16-01

Title Robotic Arms for Mars Exploration

Abstract

Leonardo is active in the field of space robotic arms since more than 30 years. Among the latestdevelopments, under an ESA contract, the robotic arm called DELIAN (DExtrous LIghtweight Arm forexploratioN), which belongs to the robotics and rover technologies theme of the ESA's Mars RoboticExploration Preparation Programme (MREP) and aims at developing a lightweight robotic arm that is atechnology building block to enable accessibility to the Martian surface for- sample acquisition- sample retrieval- instrument deployment.The biggest challenges for DELIAN are the very limited resource allocation in terms of mass, power andvolume as well as high performance requirements.In the DELIAN definition phase a variety of mission scenarios have been analysed, trading-off amongseveral kinematic joints concepts.A baseline 2 DOF joint Engineering Model has been designed and produced: its test campaign comprisedfunctional and environmental testing in Mars-like conditions .The final product is a functioning Development Model (DM) of the complete robotic arm for planetaryexploration: the Development Model has been obtained from one of the possible mission scenarios and hasbeen based on a 6 DoF kinematic structure.The arm functional performance has been tested under earth gravity: the paper presents results of theDELIAN robotic arm test results.

Authors Molina Marco, Fumagalli Alessandro, Rusconi Andrea, Zamboni Andrea

Type Paper for Seminar/Symposium/Conference

Media Mars To Earth 2018 - Research on Mars for development on Earth Workshop (11-12 May 2018, Milano, Italy)

Web site

Anno 2018

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