Chariot: The FIRST Lunar Truck

[Pavan Dave]

Today NASA added a new name to their growing list of robots. The name of this robot is Chariot. Chariot is a lunar rover created at the Johnson Space Center to move payloads as well as to transport a crew.



The neat thing about Chariot is that it takes ideas presented in FIRST and applies them to the real world. For example, Chariot's drive is an off shoot of the Robonauts 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 crab drives. The wheel box is nearly the same as well as the coaxial drive shaft to the wheels. The primary difference between the drive systems is that Chariot has all independent systems nicknamed the "King Crab" after hours of thought.


For more information about this neat robot you can check out the following link:
http://robonaut.jsc.nasa.gov/chariot/index.html

Enjoy!