Drawbar pull of a wheel with an actively actuated lug on sandy terrain

• A new form of wheel equipped with single actively actuated lug (ALW) was developed.
• Several experiments are designed for evaluating the drawbar performance of ALW.
• The ALW generates an effective drawbar pull over a wider range.
• A strategy to reduce the fluctuations of drawbar pull was proposed.
• The proposed strategy does not require the existing terramechanics formulas.

Sandy terrains are widely distributed across terrestrial, lunar and Martian surfaces. These surfaces are difficult to traverse, and their access presents an ongoing challenge for mobile robots. This paper introduces a novel wheeled mechanism integrated with an actively actuated lug. The drawbar pull characteristics are measured on a prototype mechanism affixed to the fabricated testbed undergoing a complete lug–soil interaction process. By tuning the sinkage length of the active lug, the developed wheeled mechanism can dampen the fluctuations of the drawbar pull that arise when using a fixed lugged wheel. The performance of the developed wheeled mechanism is highlighted by comparing its generated drawbar pull with that generated by a smooth wheel and a fixed lugged wheel.