A Simple Drive Load-Balancing Technique for Multi-wheeled Planetary Rovers

A simple method for balancing the motor driver load across a six-wheeled rover is presented. This method uses the concept of inflammation to model the load on each motor driver by its temperature, decreasing the load as the local temperature increases. The method is compared with both the base case, where all motors run at a fixed load; and a relatively unintelligent method involving shutting off all motors while the temperature is above a given level.We show that load balancing in this manner has the beneficial effect of avoiding overheating in individual motors, while neither overly decreasing the traversed distance nor increasing the energy used.