Ever wanted to have your Students build their own Mars rover? The Nasa Curiosity rover is an open source, build it yourself, scaled down version of the 6-wheel rover design and created by JPL and NASA uses to explore the surface of Mars. This kit is intended to be a teaching and learning experience for those who want to get involved in mechanical engineering, software, electronics, or robotics.
This Kit includes:
- +100 parts and tools to build one Rover
- 1 Controller
- RobotLAB Support
- 1 Engage! K12 classroom license for 1 year (lesson plans, activities and tutorials)
About the Project
Motivation:
JPL is always looking to inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers, and roboticists to help us explore and learn about our solar system (and beyond!). We release the plans for this Curiosity rover as a way to try and give budding enthusiasts a fun robotics project that will help teach them and get them involved in robotics sooner and at a lower cost.
Specifications & Technical Attributes:
The specific attributes of the robot you build will depend slightly on the type of electronics and motors you buy for the system. The numbers shown below are for the version of the robot that contains exactly the parts that we suggest in our build documents and parts list.
This rover is designed to function similarly to the 6 wheel rover designs on Mars and employs a few of the major driving mechanics that the Mars rovers use to traverse rocky surfaces:
- Rocker-Bogie: The Rocker-Bogie suspension system allows all 6 wheels to continually be in contact with the ground while climbing over obstacles
- Differential Pivot: Allows the weight to be mechanically offloaded from one side of the rover to the other while climbing
- 6-Wheel Ackerman Steering: Driving and steering/turning mechanism that governs where the wheels point and how fast each of them will move.
We chose a Raspberry Pi to be the "brain" of this rover for its versatility, accessibility, simplicity, and ability to add and upgrade your own modifications. Any method with which you can communicate with a Raspberry Pi (Bluetooth, WiFi, USB devices, etc) can be interfaced into the control system of the robot.
Skills Necessary
This project has elements in mechanical assembly/fabrication, uses a host of electrical components, and has software that will run it all. In order to complete this project, you will need to have some experience in the following:
- Fabrication/Machining: Although most the parts are COTS there are a few modifications necessary to adapt them to the project. These modifications will be in the form of:
- Metal cutting using band saw/dremel
- Drilling using drill press/hand drill
- Filing and sanding for part cleanup
- General Fabrication/Machining Safety
- Electronics: This project uses components like motors, motor controllers, and batteries. It will be important to have experience with the following electrical processes.
- Soldering
- Electrical debugging
- Wiring
- Electrical Safety
- Software: The rover's brain is a Raspberry Pi. Included in this repository is all the software ready to run the rover, but some knowledge is required for getting everything up and ready on the Raspberry Pi:
- Basic Linux familiarity
- Basic Python familiarity
Most of the above are skills that you can learn and pick up fairly quickly from watching videos and doing research on the internet, and throughout the project, we try to give supplemental information on some of these as well. See the build documents for more information.
