Communications of the ACM
Engineering Team Develops Chip for Mars Rover
University of Tennessee at Knoxville professor Ben Blalock
Credit: University of Tennessee at Knoxville
University of Tennessee at Knoxville (UT) researchers have designed a tiny microchip that is being used to help control the rover that recently landed on Mars.
There are about 80 Quad Operational Amplifier (op amp) microchips powering the rover's 40 motors, without which the rover would not be able to traverse the Martian surface, collect samples with its robotic arm, or maneuver the cameras for sending back pictures.
"These analog chips are in the motor controller electronics that make the camera move, pan around, go up and down," says UT professor Ben Blalock.
The new chips can withstand 500 days of potential radiation exposure and temperatures ranging from -180 degrees Celsius to +120 degrees Celsius. "We not only had to design it to meet the Martian surface environment requirements, we also had to overdesign it to operate in environments even colder than -120 degrees Celsius to help enable reuse of the microchip for other extreme environment robotic missions in the future," Blalock says.
The new chip represents a paradigm shift in the application of extreme environment electronics in space avionics, and could lead to advances in space exploration, according to Blalock.
From University of Tennessee at Knoxville
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