Mechanical Design of Step-Climbing Vehicle with Passive Linkages

Abstract

In our current research, we are developing a holonomic mobile vehicle which is capable of running over irregular terrain. Our developed vehicle realizes omni-directional motion on flat floors using special wheels and passes over non-flat ground using the passive suspension mechanism. This paper proposes a mechanical design of passive linkages for increasing the vehicle’s mobile performance on rough terrain. The developed vehicle has plural actuated wheels and all wheels are grounded for enough traction force using the passive linkage mechanism. However, according to the mechanical design of the passive linkages, the body configuration cannot fit the terrain surface and wheels cannot transmit its traction force. Therefore, in this paper, we discuss the mechanical design of the passive linkages which enable the body configuration to fit the ground shape and we propose new passive linkage mechanisms for increasing the mobile performance on rough terrain. The performance of our proposed method is verified by the experiments using our prototype vehicle.