Articulated Rover Assembly (Compact Rover Delivery)

[Xephirious]

Hey all! I set out on a mission to design a rover that can tow 10T haul 3 Kerbals and achieve a (Kerbin) speed of 20kM all under remote control and maintaining decent ground clearance. The kit had to fit inside of the readily available 3.75M Standard Fairing. Then I did myself one better and decided the 3.75M Std Fairing should hold two rovers.

I did my best to design the entire kit avoiding clipping or other "cheatish" type things, taking into account Kerbal safety, rover utility, rover longevity and future application.

After a grueling 7 hour design process I came up with the following.

10T towed no problem (on Kerbin), full lighting, 400+ battery power for extended operation in complete darkness, a small fuel tank (for emergency robotic refuel missions), a winch, the two rovers have 3 of 4 available connectors, 4 extra removable connectors and a full solar array. Please offer any suggestions for improvement!

The Kit:

Deployed (the panels breaking has been fixed):

Rover (the most recent model modified to fit 3 Kerbals):

Edited September 4, 2013 by Xephirious
Fixed links

[KAO]

please reformat image links for BB code

[Xephirious]

Sorry, should be fixed now! Waiting on mod approval of edit.

Edited September 4, 2013 by Xephirious

[Xephirious]

Just wanting to air this thread out a bit to get some of the more experienced player's thoughts. Thread got buried w/ broken links waiting for mod approval of the edit.

How would you improve it?

Do you think these rovers will work well on Duna?

[Dedjal]

My experience is that stock wheels does not work very well on planets with lower gravity than Kerbal has.

[Xephirious]

Rovers work good on Munar expeditions though, is Duna more or less gravity?

[Whackjob]

Great minds...

Think alike.

[Xephirious]

Awesome! Can you zoom in and take another cap of the rover package? I'd like to see it in detail.

[Whackjob]

Closest I could find:

The save file those were on is long gone, so the historical record is all i've got. The legs are lowered on each rover, and they're what allows them to drop that distance and not shed any parts. They're also used to have the rovers "sit up" prior to launching.

[Xephirious]

Ahh I saw your post above mine, that's a great method for getting home!

[Whackjob]

Now that I can fish up my youtube link, here's how the individual rovers worked:

Skip to 50 seconds in. I've made later versions that don't shed the side gear.

Edited September 7, 2013 by Whackjob

[HansBlix]

Nice Job. Just been trying to do the same, i assume you have robotics installed? Managed to build 2 similar designs without the articulation, single rover in a 3.5M fairing, and one with 2 rovers in a 5M fairing.

The rovers themselves I've had up to 40m/s on the mun (rcs assisted), talk about hairy but pretty stable, just don't make any fast turns or adjust direction when your about to get airborne... RIP Mr Kerbil. Plus with the rcs if they do roll you can right them easily. Note that on the 5M assembly it also has 2 rcs refuelling tanks, but need to adjust them as it's 50/50 whether they actually land on their feet.

5M dual rover assembly

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3.75M single rover assembly

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Comments/suggestions welcome. Now to get advanced robotics... MOAR MODS!!

Hans

[Whackjob]

Only mods I have installed are Kethane and that engineer one that tells you how heavy things are. And I'm mulling over ditching both.

[HansBlix]

Ah sorry Whack, was directed at OP. But as usual your designs are awesome! I just can't bring myself to limit to stock, I like sleek and clean launches

[Moar Boosters]

Rovers work good on Munar expeditions though, is Duna more or less gravity?

All just depends on your design really. Duna has quite a bit more gravity I think. On Duna the kerbals jetpack can barely lift them off the ground, where as on the mun it can almost get them into orbit. If your designs work on kerbin and work on the mun, then they'll definitely work on Duna because it's characteristics are about halfway between those 2.

[Monkeh]

I've found the black wheels to be a better bet for stability and wear and tear. Here's some screenies of what I've done, hope they help...a bit...mebbe

Parachuted into Laythe.

That last one gets to 24 m/s ish, sometimes 25 and up to 30 downhill. Starts to get a little bit unstable over 25 though. Turns like a boss.

Edited September 7, 2013 by Monkeh

[Geschosskopf]

I made an articulated rover that was also the lander and ascent vehicle. Basically, it was the normal sort of simple lander with some rotating wheel-bearing arms attached. It landed on legs as shown in the pic below. Then I'd rotate the arms over to 1 side and retract the legs on that side, allowing the thing to fall over onto its wheels. It could roll along just fine either side up thanks to the arms being able to rotate in both directions and having tail wheels top and bottom, but by rotating the arms and working the legs, it could flip itself rightside up again if needed. Then it could drive around however much before standing back up on its legs and lifting off like a normal lander again.

All that worked just fine. The only problem was, it didn't have enough fuel to get home from Mun .

[Xephirious]

Nice Rovers, I really like the moving parts! I use the hinges and rotrons alot in order to fit complex packages into smallest possible, and clearn looking, delivery packages. I avoid part clipping as much as possible as well.

Any other hinged, rotating or awkwardly moving contraptions out there?

Edited September 7, 2013 by Xephirious

[Xephirious]

Hans - I really like that tiny little rover, nice job! Looking forward to your articulating designs

[Brotoro]

My Folding Fido rover used Damned Robotics door hinges. Here is an earlier version showing the two stages of its deployment sequence:

Because of the arrangement of the sky crane (which was similar to the sky crane I used for a non-folding version), the rover had to be set down partially deployed...

...and then it would finish deployment...

...so the landing drop-off looked like this:

A later version made the sky crane more compact and arranged so that the rover could be fully deployed before being set down:

A problem I had with this rover design in actual use was that the Damned Robotics hinges would "drift" in position over time... so that when I later came back to the rover, the hinges would appear at angles that were off from where I left then... and the plates of the hinges would also no longer appear to be attached properly (they could be 90 degrees off...but the hinges still worked). But the main problem I had with this design was that the hinges allowed some wiggle in the framework that made this rover much more dangerous to drive than its solid-framework cousin. So for the safety of my kerbels, I went back to a rigid frame design.

Edited September 7, 2013 by Brotoro