• BMIFOCUS project
• rover
• Mars
• additive manufacturing
• 3D printing
• topology optimization
• industry 4.0
• chassis design
• frame
• Autodesk
• generative design
• SIRIUS project
• ROSCOSMOS
• NASA

This thesis is part of a research project funded by the Tuscany region, the "BMIFOCUS Project", whose objectives were the validation of neurostimulation studies in the context of a possible martian colonization, including the construction of a self-propelled vehicle intended to operate in hostile environments, either on Earth or in space.

This work has been carried out as part of an internship at "Sigma Ingegneria s.r.l" in Lucca, winner of the aforementioned regional tender, and is the result of 9 months dedicated to the study and than the structural design of an applicative Rover, namely "Unmanned Ground Vehicle", starting totally from scratch, a blank sheet to be filled.
At the beginning, a preliminary evaluation and investigation was needed to select the appropriate application field, following a brain-storming phase for all the possible choices and requirements definition. After the identification of the general architecture and relative subsystems, the study of the structure started performing two proposals: the first is a conventional truss welded frame, based on classical structure theory methods, the other one was get by means of topology optimization tools in the context of Industry 4.0 and Additive Manufacturing field.
By means of CATIA V5 R19, Autodesk Inventor 2019 and Fusion 360 geometrical design was carried out to best accommodate both company and personal requests. FEM analyses were performed to validated the design, both with ANSYS Workbench R18 and Nastran InCAD inside Autodesk Fusion 360. 
After the analyses phase, the entire vehicle was realized and assembled, giving that quantum leap from being just a student to become a real engineer.