The European Space Agency (ESA) has recently reignited its Lunar surface exploration projects to investigate potential future human settlements on the Moon. This research incorporates exploration of the future habitat conditions, such as radiation levels, temperature variations and terrain topography within lunar caves. This thesis contributes to the Lunar exploration program by developing electronics for the Lunar cave exploration rover kinematics, to enable navigation inside Lunar cave.

Within the scope of this thesis, the focus lies on the development of a prototype of the rover, specifically on the design of electronics and implementation of a printed circuit board (PCB). The PCB plays a vital role in facilitating the rover’s functionality. As part of this thesis, the system’s electronics will be assembled and integrated into the rover. To validate the rover’s kinematics and assembled electronics, it needs to be driven over terrain that simulates the conditions encountered within the lunar caves, which is also part of the thesis. Controlling the rover is accomplished through a specially designed application that enables communication between the user and the rover via Bluetooth. The application integrates the kinematics via Arduino platform. The thesis also features the initial demonstration of the rover’s motion capabilities on the ground.

In summary, this thesis contributes to ESA’s Lunar ground exploration projects by focusing on the development of electronics for the Lunar cave exploration rover, production and integration of electronic systems, development of the remote-control system for the rover and demonstration of the rover kinematics in test terrain.