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This is a project MOC I've been working on during my evenings and weekends for about 5 months. I really tried to cram in all the features I thought would be cool. The rover weighs just short of 3kg, has 11 motors, over 4 meters of pneumatic hose. It's controlled with two remote controls. Getting all those features with limited parts and tight space constraints was a huge challenge Main Functions: 4W Drive, Steering Switch between crab and 4-wheel steering "Solar Panel" unfold/fold Crane up/down, left/right, extension/retraction, "pincer" Cargo bay door open/close Pneumatic airlock Fully RC Other small stuff: Rotating satelite dish Detailed cabin Independent suspension on all wheels Two servos each control two pneumatic functions Design process I started with the chassis, and moved on from there. Driving and steering worked a lot better before it put on all the weight! I had to plan ahead for everything I wanted to add and how it would fit together, which got really complicated so I had to start drawing out the connections. I basically had one drawing for how the modules physically fit together, one for the pneumatics connections, and one for the electronics. Even things like the lengths of the cables would determine which battery I could hook them up to, and every single battery connection and remote control button is in use. I used a few clever tricks to give motors more than one function. For example, each pneumatic pump is also a switch, depending on the direction it spins, using a design I borrowed from youtube. Each servo motor controls two switches each, because by design it was possible to make functions opposites of each other. The pneumatics engage in order of easiest to most difficult, so there are some rubber bands to set the order of activation. E.g. the up/down motion of the crane is paired with the storage lid. Improvements There are a lot of possible improvements that could be made, but I'm eager to move on to the next project and I'm happy enough with it already. Here's what I would change: Less functions overall. My line of thought when I started this project was "ooh I'll make everything with pneumatics because they're cool, and make it all remote control, and add crab steering because why not, and etc etc". But then it really dragged on forever. Next time I'll keep it small and simpler. Especially now that I've ticked most of my idea boxes No / fewer remote-control pneumatics switches. I did it, it's possible, but it takes up a lot of space and often doesn't work so well More robust steering (and no crab steering). The crab steering takes up like a third of the space and adds a ton of weight, and doesn't work very well. After trying it myself, I'm even more impressed by Madoca's shaman If a vehicle, all wheel drive For something so heavy and high torque like this, i'll definitely keep each driveline on separate batteries. Having two drivelines (left and right) improved the performance a lot, but since I needed every single battery output I moved all motors to the same battery, which killed performance I'll probably avoid exteriors and paneling — I'm not that great at it and it just adds weight Inspiration The idea and inspiration came from Eurobricks mars mission contest (ZeroBricks, Samolot, Kubic5), Simon stallenhag's artwork, and image searches for mars rover concept art I'll take more (and higher quality) pics of it as I take it apart, just need to wait for a free day with good lighting! Happy to answer any questions! Thanks for reading
