SherpaTT

SherpaTT is a hybrid walking and driving rover with an active suspension system developed for high mobility in irregular terrain. The internal power supply (2x 10,000m Ah@44.4 V), a lidar sensor, a camera and the manipulator arm allow the cinduction of autonomous exploration activities.

The rover is equipped with six standardized electro-mechanical interfaces, one of them being the manipulators hand interface. Due to the electro-mechanical itnerfaces, the robot can be equipped and reconfigured with modular payload items to match the current task. One example being the usage of modular sampling devices, that can be sealed and handed over to the robotic team mate Coyote III.

SherpaTT’s overall weight is about 150 kg. Due to self-locking gears in the four suspension units, the rover is able to cope with high additional payload weights without increasing energy consumption to maintain the current robot’s body pose.

SherpaTT is developed within the scope of the project TransTerrA which aims to implement a logistics chain, based on a heterogeneous team of mobile and stationary robotic devices. SherpaTT has the role of an exploration and sample collecting rover in the heterogeneous robotic team. Collected samples are handed over to the Shuttle rover (Coyote III) for transport to the landing site and eventually sample return to earth.

SherpaTT represents an enhanced design of the Sherpa rover, which was originally developed within the RIMRES project. The design considerations and development concept of SherpaTT is derived from the lessons learned of Sherpa.  By introducing a knee joint within the suspension units (“legs” of the system, a three dimensional workspace is created. Furthermore two of the joints in the original design were used very rarely. Hence, a reduction from six degrees of freedom (DoF) in the original design to five  DoF in the new design along with a significant increase of the workspace of each suspension unit was possible.

Besides the primary scenario with respect to extraterrestrial exploration, SherpaTT demonstrates its application to terrestrial scenarios as well, such as search and rescue and /or security. The water proof design of the suspension units allows to exchange the central body of the robot to create SherpaUW which is aspired to be applied in deep sea exploration scenarios.