Introduction

Power sources available to the Robot Constructor are petrol, rechargeable electricity from solar batteries, or using the heat from nuclear fission to generate electricity.

For our rover system, we decided to use both solar batteries and heat from nuclear fission as the power source for the mother ship, and each sub robot will only carry certain amount of rechargeable batteries for their power source. So the mother ship stays like a main power station until a mission is completed in certain area, and those small sub robots go out to do search, as the sub robot only carries batteries they can move faster and more flexible.

Why Solar Power

For the Planar Robots to work on planets, it must have sufficient and continuous energy supply. For daytime, the best and reasonable source of this energy must be the Sun. The energy supply from the Sun is truly enormous: For example, on average, the Mars's surface receives about 590 W per M² of solar radiation... Read more

Solar Cells and the Photovoltaic Generator

Solar cells represent the fundamental power conversion unit of a photovoltaic system. They are made from semiconductors, and have much in common with other solid-state electronic devices, such as diodes, transistors and integrated circuits... Read more

Why Nuclear Energy

In the previous paragraphs, we discussed solar modules provided electric power for space missions on Mars. As missions become more ambitious and complex, power needs increases, scientists investigated various options to meet these challenging.... Read more

Improvement of Future Rover

In the future, the rovers really have to be able to reason. It has to keep track of where the sun is, how much power it is using, how much power is being generated and what terrain lies ahead. In addition to dodging boulders, cliffs and streams that its video cameras... Read more