Nano-Dandelion conceptual Moon rover prototype

This is a short entry on the blog to talk a little about our new Dandelion conceptual Moon rover prototype version that we call "Nano-Dandelion".

The main purpose of this version is to be as small and light as possible. The reason for this is because we are targeting a rover version of about 1kg and about 10x10x10cm form factor for the final version of the rover (Mini-Dandelion), so we need to create a rover version of about that size and with just 160gr of mass (1Kg on Earth -> 160gr on the Moon because the Moon have just 1/6 of the Earth gravity).

So, to improve the mathematics models of our simulations and since we do already test a bigger version of the rover (Dandelion Full-Size, about 3.5Kg), we decide to get "as small and light as possible".

Here is a summary of the components size and weight use it in this new "Nano-Dandelion" version of our beloved rover. Most of the components are the "world's smaller" in his particular category:

There are many "Nano" robots prototypes out there, they are always a exaggeration on the smallest of course because non of them is actually at the nano scale. So, the "Nano" terms in this robots are most about "the smallest possible" than the actual scale.

One thing that we want to do with this robot differently from other "Nano" robots is that we wanted a fully functional robot, I mean, in most of the cases, the nano robots prototypes tries to reduce so much the size or weight that the ending robot it actually can't be use it, they remove the battery and apply power with a fine wire, or use small capacitance for just a couple of second of work, or they turn the robot On and there is no way to control the thing.

In our case, the "Nano-Dandelion" is fully functional, it have his own Lipo battery for about 15min work, a Nano solar charger, an engine with differential traction control, an IMU (3 axes gyro + 3 axes accelerometer), a Rx and Tx RF for receive and send commands/data including a nano RF 320x240 color camera and video transmitter, wheels are made with Nitinol, which is a smart material that recover a previous form by heat, but that's another history....

The end result: a small robot of just 55x45x40mm and just 20gr!!, yeap that's right, just 20gr!:

We just start some testing of this variation of our rover, to test the traction in Moon like surface we use flour, here are some nice tests:

Hope you enjoy it!