Purpose: The University of Washington’s Artemis Project is a challenge that Oregon Tech is participating in with five other schools. Members from all the schools were put into teams to work on different aspects of the project including geology, mechanical functions, rover design, and computer programming. The Oregon team chose the rover collaborative with the goal of creating a vehicle that can enter and navigate a simulated lava tube course.
Methodology: The specifications of the course are to descend into the cave, climb at least a 30-degree incline and navigate over sand and rocky surfaces, all while in complete darkness of the cave. To accomplish this, we were sent Vex kits to get us started. In order to traverse over the various terrain, we needed to design something versatile. We created three different designs. The first design uses crescent shaped legs, the second has four tank-treaded legs that can move independently, and the most promising so far being a spoked wheel-leg hybrid.
Results: We have just received our lava tube obstacle course and have not had the chance to test our designs on it yet. However, we have tested our designs over various terrain and found that each design has its own pros and cons which I will showcase in the presentation.
Conclusion: This project is far from over and we still have a lot of work to do, our next steps are to improve object recognition and try our hand at stereoscopic 3D mapping.