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Industrial Design · rfalconvargas

NASA HERC Rover — Crank Steering System

For the NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge (RISD team, 2026), I designed and fabricated the rover’s crank-based steering system in carbon fiber. The work spans hand-drawn steering geometry, a SolidWorks crank assembly with exploded views, and the full composite manufacturing chain — cutting carbon, layup, and demolding — culminating in the steering module installed on the competition trike.

Discipline

Industrial Design

Year

2026

Medium

Carbon-fiber mechanism

NASA HERC Rover — Crank Steering System — Carbon-fiber mechanism

Gallery

Selected frames

NASA HERC Rover — Crank Steering System
NASA HERC Rover — Crank Steering System
NASA HERC Rover — Crank Steering System
NASA HERC Rover — Crank Steering System
NASA HERC Rover — Crank Steering System
NASA HERC Rover — Crank Steering System
NASA HERC Rover — Crank Steering System

Reflection

Reflection

The rover taught me to design under the brutal honesty of a competition deadline and real terrain. Steering is unforgiving — the geometry has to be right on paper before you commit expensive carbon to a mold, so I iterated the crank linkage in sketches and CAD until the kinematics felt trustworthy. Laying up the carbon and demolding the parts myself collapsed the gap between designer and fabricator in the best way.

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