Comment by lisper
22 days ago
I had the privilege of working with Don back at JPL at the time he invented the rocker bogey. (I wrote the software for the first prototype with a computer on board.) Not only was he brilliant, he was also a really nice guy. I didn't appreciate at the time how rare that combination of traits is among humans.
To my astonishment, it turns out Don doesn't have a Wikipedia page (though the rocker bogie suspension does).
He really deserves a page, in the engineering world this is as notable as it gets. The number of skills casually on display here. Just wow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocker-bogie
AI-assisted project idea: recreate that animation as code, and then include the differential gear.
Edit: Someone already made a 3D animation: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hO8DbfE7hJw
Reminds me of the fractal vise - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBeOgGt_oWU
Thanks for pointing out the rocker-bogie Wikipedia page. There's a true dearth of info about them. Do you happen to know if there's any kinematic analyses of these suspensions available? I used to do stress analysis in the aerospace industry and I've been interested in that sort of analysis since the 1997 Sojourner rover.
I'm not sure what you mean by kinematic analysis, but the video mentions several analytical analyses of his suspension and how he came up with it. They did some computer simulations to optimize how it would deal with various obstacles. Really cool and clever.
I wasn't sure what word to use. That suspension has lots of pin joints and linkages, which are usually the subject of kinematics, 3-bar linkages, mechanisms, etc etc.
I realize that the stiffness of the rockers and links will make a difference in how forces are distributed, because that suspension is clearly not statically determinant, but the main factor in the design has to be the proportions of the links and beams. I can't find anything about that, so I asked.
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> Do you happen to know if there's any kinematic analyses of these suspensions available?
Sorry, I have no idea. I never actually worked on the mechanics, just the software.
"Don is clearly one of those one-of-a-kind engineers JPL has thrived upon for all its history." -- Mike Sander, 02 JUN 2002
It's hard to think of more meaningful praise for Donald Bickler.