DOI QR코드

DOI QR Code

A New Wheel Design for Miniaturized Terrain Adaptive Robot

험지 주행용 소형 로봇을 위한 바퀴의 설계

  • Kim, Yoo Seok (School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National University) ;
  • Kim, Haan (School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National University) ;
  • Jung, Gwang Pil (School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National University) ;
  • Kim, Seong Han (School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National University) ;
  • Cho, Kyu Jin (School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National University) ;
  • Chu, Chong Nam (School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National University)
  • 김유석 (서울대학교 기계항공공학부) ;
  • 김한 (서울대학교 기계항공공학부) ;
  • 정광필 (서울대학교 기계항공공학부) ;
  • 김성한 (서울대학교 기계항공공학부) ;
  • 조규진 (서울대학교 기계항공공학부) ;
  • 주종남 (서울대학교 기계항공공학부)
  • Received : 2012.11.06
  • Accepted : 2012.11.14
  • Published : 2013.01.01

Abstract

Small mobile robots which use round wheels are suitable for driving on a flat surface, but it cannot climb the obstacle whose height is greater than the radius of wheels. As an alternative, legged-wheels have been proposed by many researchers due to its better climbing performance. However, driving and climbing performances have a trade-off relationship so that their driving performance should be sacrificed. In this study, in order to achieve both driving and climbing performances, a new transformable wheel was developed. The developed transformable wheel can have a round shape on a flat surface and change its shape into legged-wheel when it makes a contact with an obstacle. For design of the transformable wheel, the performance of legged-wheel was analyzed with respect to the number and curvature of the leg, and then the new transformable wheel was designed based on the analysis. Contrary to the existing transformable wheels that contain additional actuators for the transformation, the developed transformable wheel can be unfolded without any additional actuator. In this study, in order to validate the transformable wheel, a simple robot platform was fabricated. Consequently, it climbed the obstacle whose height is 2.6 times greater than the wheel radius.

Keywords

References

  1. Matsuno, F. and Tadokoro, S., "Rescue robots and systems in japan," Proceedings of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Biomimetics, pp. 12-20, 2004.
  2. Kaspari, M. and Weiser, M. D., "The size-grain hypothesis and interspecific scaling in ants," Fuctional Ecology, Vol. 13, pp. 530-538, 1999. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2435.1999.00343.x
  3. Allen, T. J., Quinn, R. D., Bachmann, R. J., and Ritzmann, R. E., "Abstracted biological principles applied with reduced actuation improve mobility of legged vehicles," Proceedings of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Vol. 2, pp. 1370-1375, 2003.
  4. Moore, E. Z., Campbell, D., Grimminger, F., and Buehler, M., "Realiable stair climbing in the simple hexapod 'RHex'," Proceedings of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Vol. 3, pp. 2222-2227, 2002.
  5. Moore, J. M., Lambrecht, B., Horchler, A. D., Ritzmann, R. E., and Quinn, R. D., "Highly mobile and robust small quadruped robots," Proceedings of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Vol. 1, pp. 82-87, 2003.
  6. Shen, S. Y., Li, C. H., Cheng, C. C., Lu, J. C., Wang, S. F., and Lin, P. C., "Design of a leg-wheel hybrid mobile platform," Proceedings of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Robots and Systems, pp. 4682-4687, 2009.