Introducing the Open Rover Platform

Last time I talked about changing direction. I have decided to make an Open Rover Platform that will allow anyone to print and assemble their own rover with any modifications they want. I started looking at the JPL Open Rover design and I liked part of their design, but I still liked part of mine.  I did not like the fact they are using expensive metal erector parts, so I decided to design my own modular 3D printable parts. Printing my own gives me the change to make special parts as needed.

Don’t worry I will share my designs with the world, but I want to print and assemble my sandbox rover first. I want to make sure that this is indeed going to work. So far with the limited printing that I have done, it seems to be working great.

The new platform is designed to be assembled with M3 screws and I have designed the platform, trusses, beams, differentials, suspension, mast, electronics boxes and enough room for a fireproof lipo bag underneath the rover.

I hard to tell from the image above but the new design is very modular.  Here are some of the parts:

Above is a 90mm X 150mm platform.  The hole spacing is 10mm and 20mm and 5mm thick

Above is a 190mm x 30mm truss, with the same 10mm and 20mm hole spacing, it’s 6mm thick.

Here we have a 10mm x 100mm beam.

Here is an example of an electronics module, this one is for a Raspberry Pi Zero.  This module can be mounted horizontally or vertically the hole on the top of the box are on the 20mm spacing and the holes on the size are on the 10mm spacing. The wire access to the Pi would be filled with silicone to protect from the weather on the deployed rover.

All in all, I am really liking this idea of an Open Platform.  It gives me the flexibility of adding, moving or even removing modules and redesigning the entire rover without much extra printing and wasted plastic.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this.  Please leave me a comment or ask a question. I would love to know if you would be interested in building one as well.  I do plan on making assembly videos once I get the sandbox running.

Here are some photos of work in progress:

The photo above is the underside of the mast mount and rotation.  The larger gear is 2x the number of teeth as the smaller one.  This gives me 360 degrees of rotation from a servo that only rotates 180 degrees. Will this be too much stress on the servo?  I don’t know yet but I will let you know.