  Optimal locomotion and efficient traversal of extraterrestrial rovers in
dynamic terrains and environments is an important problem statement in the
field of planetary science and geophysical systems. Designing a superlative and
efficient architecture for the suspension mechanism of planetary rovers is a
crucial step towards robust rovers. This paper focuses on the Rocker Bogie
mechanism, a standard suspension methodology associated with foreign terrains.
After scrutinizing the available previous literature and by leveraging various
optimization and global minimization algorithms, this paper offers a novel
study on mechanical design optimization of a rovers suspension mechanism. This
paper presents extensive tests on Simulated Annealing, Genetic Algorithms,
Swarm Intelligence techniques, Basin Hoping and Differential Evolution, while
thoroughly assessing every related hyper parameter, to find utility driven
solutions. We also assess Dual Annealing and subsidiary algorithms for the
aforementioned task while maintaining an unbiased testing standpoint for
ethical research. Computational efficiency and overall fitness are considered
key valedictory parameters for assessing the related algorithms, emphasis is
also given to variable input seeds to find the most suitable utility driven
strategy. Simulated Annealing was obtained empirically to be the top performing
heuristic strategy, with a fitness of 760, which was considerably superior to
other algorithms and provided consistent performance across various input seeds
and individual performance indicators.
