The Drunk Rover Solution, inspired by earthworms

Our first foray into biomechanical engineering was an application in the field of terramechanics, wherein our design solutions were applied to a terrestrial rover, Solar Rover 2.
The incumbent rover design had difficulties in locomoting over sandy terrains, especially sandy slopes, due to high ground pressures.

To improve the process, we turned to the biological world, particularly earthworms. Earthworms (and some other slithering creatures and inchworms) move about the world using peristaltic motion, wherein they maintain a solid contact, or footing, with the traverse medium while moving other segments of their mass. This animal locomotion theory informed our approach to a solution: if we could maintain one solid fixed footing, there can be variance at the other end of the kinematic chain.

This traverse behavior is akin to drunkard leaning forward while attempting to go up some stairs:
even if they lose some control, by leaning forward, they still make progress up the stairs.

We designed a highly refined subsystem requiring only one active (linear) degree of freedom. The refinement to one active DOF reduced complexity, and our unique solution enables the rover to remain stable in all traverse configurations. Following the theory exploration from first biological principles, we designed numerous components to be implemented on the rover. This included CAD modelling and simulations, results in the slideshow below. For more information, please read the treatise here.