MapleSim Breaks New Ground in Hardware-in-the-Loop Real-Time Simulation for Planetary Rovers

In the space industry, the design, building and testing of rover prototypes is extremely expensive and system testing typically does not occur until late in the design/testing process, leading to a long development time. In response to this, Dr. Amir Khajepour, Canada Research Chair in Mechatronic Vehicle Systems and Professor of Engineering in the Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering department at the University of Waterloo (UW), and his team worked with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and Maplesoft, to develop a Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) test platform for solar powered planetary rovers.

Their approach allows component testing within a simulation loop before a full rover prototype is available. It essentially creates a virtual testing environment for the component under test, “tricking” it into thinking it is operating within a full prototype. Using MapleSim, the modeling and simulation tool from Maplesoft, high fidelity and computationally efficient models were created for this real-time application.

Using this test platform, scenarios that are hard to replicate in a lab setup, such as the Martian environment, or components that are not yet available, can be modeled while hardware components that are available can communicate with these software models for real-time simulations. The goal is to progressively add hardware components to the simulation loop as they become available. In this way, system testing takes place even without all the hardware components, bridging the gap between the design and testing phases.

The main advantage of this approach is that it significantly reduces the overall development time in the project. In addition, this allows for component testing under dangerous scenarios without the risk of damaging a full rover prototype.

To learn more, read the full user case study.