Protection against overturning of a lunar-planetary lander using a controlled landing gear

This paper describes an attitude control method to prevent the overturning of lunar and planetary landers. The proposed control method that is based on a variable-damping shock absorber for the landing gear is experimentally validated. Conventionally, the landing gear of lunar and planetary landers has a fixed shock attenuation parameter that is not used proactively for attitude control of the lander during the touchdown sequence. The proposed method suppresses any disturbance to the attitude of the lander by adjusting the damping coefficient of each landing leg independently, based on the angular velocity and displacement velocity of each landing leg. First, the control method for the variable damper is presented. Second, the result of a landing experiment conducted in a two-dimensional plane is shown. These results indicate that the proposed semi-active landing gear system is effective for preventing the overturning of the lander on inclined terrain.