New Design Idea for Mars Rover Wheels (Volk racing wheels)

April 7th, 2008

Tip! There is an huge amount of accessories that allow pickup truck owners to convert their weekday work horse to comfortable, efficient and enjoyable transportation. Accessories like lowering kits, lift kits, tonneau covers and custom wheels.

Roving across the surface of the Planet is no easy feat. Just getting there is one heck of proposition in itself. Vast surfaces on our Red Planet companion make it difficult to choose where to cruise. Terrain must also be over come, which is no easy endeavor, just getting to the top of Husband Hill named after the Captain of the Columbia Space Shuttle crew, took months.

Life is not easy if you are the Mars Rover, you have so many worried; you are indebted to the taxpayer for your chance to explore another planet, you can never soak up enough Sun to remain fully charged and you have to worry about the Devil too. Those Dust Devils are mighty fierce although they are able to help clean off the solar cells.

Climbing mounds, hills and steep terrain is like a story of a Robotic System on the reality TV Show “Survivor,” the odds are against, you but you can never leave the island. Since steep terrain often has the best exploratory opportunities, one needs a robot which can easily transverse the Mars Landscape.

I propose we redesign the wheels, with angled spikes, which grip as it climbs and then retract once the wheel moves forward. The spikes will be no larger than those big nails you use to frame a house with and they will pierce thru the concave part of the tread on the outer surface of the wheel. This will allow the Rover to not fall over.

Further I propose using LED lights for forward vision so we can see on our screens back at home what is going on. Efficiency is the name of the game and we need lights, which do not suck up all the juice in the batteries that we need for mobility. Climbing steep terrain will take more energy from the batteries you see? LED lights are bright, but very low wattage and we can make them run using electromagnetic induction technology to charge a capacitor instead of the headlights working off a battery. We use the vibrational energy of the Rover’s own motor and the bumps on the ground that our Red Rover will travel over.

Tip! After a week or so, depending on how much usage and dirt your car sees, you’ll want to first hose off all the loose dirt and grit from the wheels (the last thing you want to do is polish it into the metal, scratching the surface) and give them a wash with mild soapy warm water. Despite the availability of many cleaners on the market, this is the best way to keep the wheels clean and undamaged.

Currently there are some nifty micro-flashlights being used which you can buy which use a similar technique and are available thanks to the Everlight Flashlight technology research lab. These smaller flashlights work by shaking them for about thirty seconds and shine for about 6 minutes and they shine quite bright since they use a very bright LED light. Here is a link to this home use flashlight:

http://www.modernoutpost.com/gear/details/ee_shakelight.html

Here is a quick movie you can watch online to see how this technology works.

http://www.modernoutpost.com/gear/movies/ee_forever.MPG

If they get too dim from too smooth of a trail, yah, we wish, then the system would revert back to the battery. Additionally we can run the spike system on the wheels by using the same energy source of the bumpy terrain, which activates tiny servos of .2 watts per wheel. Perhaps this is a good way to save energy and increase efficiency? Think on this.

Tip! Overall, buying the best quality wheels you can, and giving them regular measures of attention is going to give you the best value for money and save you a lot of effort in the long run.

Lance Winslow

Entry Filed under: Grinding Wheels

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