This short video has Trent Tresch in the SAM RGS simulator, demonstrating four gates used by the Apollo astronauts both in analog training and on the Moon: walk, loping stride, unilateral skip (a.k.a. “Schmitt Skip”, and “kangaroo” hop. Matthias Beach is walking behind the rig in order to provide a more smooth motion profile, to compensate for the tendency of the counterweight mass to invoke oscillations along the x axis until full momentum is built. He is not pushing the rig, rather enabling Trent to enter the research grid more effectively. A future addition to the SAM RGS will be a computer controlled motor that compensates for the kinetic lag caused by the increased mass.
These video segments are central to an analysis of motion over x (forward/back) and z (up/down) coordinates for a paper to be presented at the International Astronautical Congress 2024, Milan, Italy.
The paper will be made available at the Resources section of the SAM website once published in the conference proceedings.
