On the treatment of soft soil parameter uncertainties in planetary rover mobility simulations

• Computer model for rover mobility simulation.
• Bevameter tests for assessing uncertainties of soil parameters in the model.
• Uncertainty propagation by employing probabilistic and non-probabilistic procedures.
• Probabilistic Bayesian approach gives best results.

Nowadays soft soil–wheel contact models are widely used for predicting the mobility of rovers in off-road applications. However, most of the contact models used in computer simulations are based on semi-empirical laws for which soil parameters can be assessed only with large uncertainty. This lack of knowledge results in significant uncertainty on the rover position predictions. Applied to a planetary rover model, this paper illustrates probabilistic and non-probabilistic techniques for efficient treatment of soil parameter uncertainty for rover position predictions.