LEGO® Sojourner Mars Lander - Clifford Heath

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Enthralled by the Mars lander Sojourner robot's ability to climb objects, I made this model using LEGO® Technix®. The following pictures show you how to make one. I would have used six wheels the same, but didn't have them. Nonetheless it demonstrates quite well how this rocker-bogie suspension can climb over objects taller than a wheel with almost no disturbance to the chassis.

Click picture to show animation (900K):

       

Detail stills

Differential arrangement using gears:

Differential arrangement using cranks:

Old model

The original version didn't have any side-to-side differential arrangement. These are a bit fuzzy because I only made them by putting LEGO® pieces directly into the scanner!

Each main bogie is made with a 12-rail (eleven holes), with the main pivot above the fifth hole and the small bogie pivoted in the second hole. This means that all six wheels have equal weight and are equally spaced (the first two pictures were taken before I made this change though). The main bogies are at the front end, and a mock-up of the spectrophotometer is at the rear.

Underneath:

With one double bogie removed:

The double bogie I removed:


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