An Amrita paper titled, “Design of Spider Mechanism for Extraterrestrial Rover”, won the best paper award at the 2^nd International Conference on Emerging Trends in Mechanical Engineering (ICETME – 2015) organized by the department of Mechanical Engineering, Toc H Institute of Science and Technology (TIST), Ernakulam, Kerala from September 3-5, 2015. The paper was presented by Adithye Suresh, final-year Mechanical Engineering student, Amrita School of Engineering, Amritapuri.

The paper was authored by BTech students Abin Simon, Kailash Dutt, Praveen Basil, Sreekuttan T.K., Adithye Suresh and Arun M. under the guidance of Professor Dr. Ganesh Udupa and Assistant Professor Pramod Sreedharan in the department of Mechanical Engineering, Amrita School of Engineering, Amritapuri campus.

The paper relates to a mechanism that involves enabling the arms of a rover to traverse up steps/rocks and still be able to take the shocks of uneven or rough terrain. The primary use of the mechanism discussed in this paper is to allow extraterrestrial rovers to climb high stepped terrain and have a suspension system in place to provide restoring force for the arms to come down and provide traction for the wheels over the ground. Such a mechanism allows the rover to travel uncharted and unexplored terrain.

The paper was also published in the International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology (IJIRSET) (ISSN (Online): 2319 – 8753).

This rover was presented at the 2015 University Rover Challenge (URC), Mars Desert Research Station, Hanksville, Utah, United States, May 28-30, 2015.