The concept of the rocker bogie locomotion system has undergone extensive development by
NASA/JPL, including a number of flight standard and development models. The Sojourner
vehicle placed onto the surface of Mars in July 1997 as part of NASA’s highly successful
Mars Pathfinder mission, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity and Perseverance was a product of
this activity and also utilised a locomotion subsystem of the ‘‘Rocker Bogie’’ design.
Evolution of Rocker Bogie suspension system and a brief overview of the Rocker Bogie
suspension system is initially discussed in this thesis work.
We also concentrate on the design considerations of the Rocker bogie suspension system,
challenges in selection of materials based on its purpose, the challenge in planning and
developing light-weight rocker bogie suspension. In this work the endeavour is to distribute
these the major advantages embedded with the rocker bogie conventional system in general.
Starting on the analysis of multibody systems modelling of such vehicles different
approaches can be seen in the literature, from kinematic analysis and optimization ,
quasi-static studies related to the ability to overcome obstacles to dynamic aspects that take
into account wheel slippage and complex models of wheel-terrain interaction