Design and development of the T0-R0 rover for the European Rover Challenge 2018 - Management of Team DIANA

During the future manned missions to Moon and/or Mars, astronauts will be assisted by mobile robotic systems capable of performing various tasks, which span from scientific research to maintenance tasks. International intervarsity competitions have been set up because of the need to investigate, test and validate, in analog mission operational scenarios, solutions that will be applied to the next generation of space rovers. Team DIANA, a student team from Politecnico di Torino, developed T0-R0, an engineering model of an astronaut assistance rover, designed for competing in European Rover Challenge 2018. After an introductory discussion of planetary space robotics this thesis will carry on to describe the execution of the project from the preliminary design phase to the production of the latest version of the rover, which presents innovative solutions such as modified rocker boogie suspension system and robotic arm with exchangeable tools. The strict requirements and constraints of the project posed numerous challenges both technical and organizational which will be illustrated and discussed in detail in the thesis. Team DIANA successfully managed to compete in the European Rover Challenge in September 2018 obtaining a good final result considering that it was the first time that an Italian team reached the final stages of the competition, proving that the project was correctly carried out and setting a solid start point for future improvements and developments.