Wiggle up that hill
Published May 13, 2020
Mars rovers have trouble in the Red Planet’s sands because their wheels lose traction on hills. But Georgia Tech roboticists have a solution: a method they call “rear rotator pedaling,” that everyone else called “wiggling” that lets the robot climb a sandy Martian slope (or one made of poppy seeds, which is apparently similar).“By avalanching materials from the front wheels, it creates a localized fluid hill for the back wheels that is not as steep as the real slope. The rover is always self-generating and self-organizing a good hill for itself.”
