Deep Space Landing—Soft Tensegrity is Possible for its Designable Performances

Abstract

Soft tensegrity with mechanical interpretability is introduced for soft landing in deep space probes, since the cables and struts form soft tensegrity through various connections can be balanced by self-stress and easy to fabricate. In this work, a novel soft tensegrity lander is creatively proposed and a refined theoretical model is established to coordinate its static and dynamic performances to explore the applicability of the whole landing process. Specifically, a fast multibody dynamic method, considering the flexibility of struts, the viscoelasticity of cables and contact-impact, is built by affine transformation absolute nodal coordinate formulation. Given the inefficient performance coordination of high-dimensional nonlinear systems, an integrated reverse design method combining a data-driven surrogate model with Pareto frontier theory is proposed. In experiments for landing, the scenarios simulating different satellite soil environments are constructed to provide possible application requirements for a soft tensegrity lander. The results of this paper could inspire the new design method of meta-structures, and provide a solid foundation for establishing practical guidelines for soft tensegrity with reverse design capability for aerospace.

Keywords: Soft tensegrity structure, Deep space landing, Multi-body dynamics, Energy-absorbing, Data-driven surrogate model