Torino Spring's elastic components ready for an expedition to the Red Planet

Dozens of rovers move across an expanse of red sand. Some of them collect surface samples, while others venture into rocky craters searching for a payload to secure. This is not the setting of Ridley Scott's latest masterpiece, but the European Rover Challenge. Held in Kielce (Poland), the ERC is the largest space robotics competition in Europe, gathering teams of young engineers from all over the world to develop a future generation of rovers for Mars exploration.

Working shoulder to shoulder with Team Diana of Politecnico di Torino, the spring manufacturer Torino Spring also attended the competition. Together they presented TRINITY, a new terrestrial rover designed and assembled during this past year. Throughout the competition, the drone piloted by the team had to complete four different tasks simulating actual mission conditions.

Let's take a closer look at the rover, shall we?
TRINITY is a motorized rover equipped with six wheels (four of which are outer steering).The model has a rocker-bogie design to ensure advanced mobility. The elasticity is concentrated in the abovementioned wheels, a prototype designed by Team Diana and made by Torino Spring Srl.

BLDC brushless motors are allocated inside the wheels, granting high torque and protection for the drive system at the same time. The rover features a robot arm with six degrees of freedom (three thanks to the main structure and three thanks to a spherical wrist made with FDM technology). The electric and logic systems are stored inside the main frame, which can be interchanged with functional secondary frames tasked with hosting the various payloads. TRINITY weighs about 50 kg, for a floor space of 1.2 by 0.7 m, and a maximum height reached by the arm of 1.8 m.

The European Rover Challenge proved to be an interesting competition for Torino Spring, as it could demonstrate its technical skills in a cutting-edge international environment.