Abstract
Abstract. This paper proposes an innovative and systematic approach for synthesizing mechanical structures of wheeled mobile robots. The principle and terminologies used for the proposed synthesis method are presented by adopting the concept of modular design, isomorphic and non-isomorphic, and set theory with its associated combinatorial mathematics. The modular-based innovative synthesis and design of wheeled robots were conducted at two levels. Firstly at the module level, by creative design and analysing the structures of classic wheeled robots, a wheel module set containing four types of wheel mechanisms, a suspension module set consisting of five types of suspension frames and a chassis module set composed of five types of rigid or articulated chassis were designed and generalized. Secondly at the synthesis level, two kinds of structure synthesis modes, namely the isomorphic-combination mode and the non-isomorphic combination mode were proposed to synthesize mechanical structures of wheeled robots; which led to 241 structures for wheeled mobile robots including 236 novel ones. Further, mathematical models and a software platform were developed to provide appropriate and intuitive tools for simulating and evaluating performance of the wheeled robots that were proposed in this paper. Eventually, physical prototypes of sample wheeled robots/rovers were developed and tested so as to prove and validate the principle and methodology presented in this paper.
Highlights
There is growing interest in space exploration and different kinds of mobile robots have been sent to the Lunar and Martian surfaces for detecting and revealing the mystery of vast space, especially in the solar system that surrounds our planet as indicated by Wilson (2005) and Putz (1998)
For a wheeled robot Ri = {Wi, Si, Bi}, if all of its three modules, i.e. the wheel module Wi, the suspension module Si, and the chassis module Bi are configured with solo type of mechanisms/structures, which means the wheeled robot has all the three modules with degree of choice (DOC) of one as DC (Wi) = DC (Si) = DC (Bi) = 1, and if the structure of a wheeled robot is synthesized by a combination satisfying
According to the above definition of isomorphic and nonisomorphic combinations, the modular-based structure design of wheeled robots can be achieved through two kinds of basic synthesis modes, i.e. isomorphic-combination synthesis mode denoted as set RI and non-isomorphic-combination synthesis mode indicated as set RNI
Summary
There is growing interest in space exploration and different kinds of mobile robots have been sent to the Lunar and Martian surfaces for detecting and revealing the mystery of vast space, especially in the solar system that surrounds our planet as indicated by Wilson (2005) and Putz (1998). In most of the space exploration programmes, a proper rover with excellent mobility is required so as to traverse terrains with obstacles such as boulders, desert and small craters, Siegwart et al (2002) These rovers need to be able to adapt themselves for harsh environment, including lower gravity, high vacuum, heavy radiation, extremely hot and cold temperature, and weak magnetic field. In this paper we attempt to tackle the first issue by presenting an efficient and intuitive structure synthesis approach for generating a substantial amount of structures for n-wheeled rovers; and the second issue by proposing a theoretical model accompanied with a virtual simulation platform for rover performance evaluation and optimization.
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