Characterization of the ROAMS Simulation Environment for Testing Rover Mobility on Sloped Terrain

As the duration of rover missions increases (the Mars Exploration Rovers are each currently beyond 1370 sols on the Martian surface), a wider variety of terrain types (slopes, soil types, etc) will usually be accessed. It is extremely important that a simulation environment used for flight systems has the necessary fidelity to model rover mobility on sloped, uneven terrain such as that encountered in actual missions. The main objective of the ROAMS (Rover Analysis, Modeling and Simulation) study was to characterize the dynamics components of the ROAMS simulation environment for mobility algorithm development and testing for the MSL (Mars Science Laboratory) rover currently planned for a 2009 launch. This paper compares the results of a series of tests run on a variety of soil types and on level/sloped terrain with the FIDO (Field Integrated Design and Operations) rover on a tilt table to the ROAMS simulation of the same experimental setup.