Abstract
This paper firstly presents the design and modeling of a quadruped wheeled robot named Tarantula. It has four legs each having four degrees of freedom with a proximal end attached to the trunk and the wheels for locomotion connected at the distal end. The two legs in the front and two at the back are actuated using two motors which are placed inside the trunk for simultaneous abduction or adduction. It is designed to manually reconfigure its topology as per the cross-sections of the drainage system. The bi-directional suspension system is designed using a single damper to prevent the trunk and inside components from shock. Formulation for kinematics of the wheels that is coupled with the kinematics of each leg is presented. We proposed the cost-effective method which is also an on-site approach to estimate the kinematic parameters and the effective trunk dimension after assembly of the quadruped robot using the monocular camera and ArUco markers instead of high-end devices like a laser tracker or coordinate measurement machine. The measurement technique is evaluated experimentally and the same set up was used for trajectory tracking of the Tarantula. The experimental method for the kinematic identification presented here can be easily extended to the other mobile robots with serial architecture designed legs.
Highlights
Drains are an integral part of every modern city, where drainage systems are entirely subsurface in most countries
Design of the robotic platform that can change its height and is holonomic, Formulation for kinematics of the wheeled locomotion coupled with the leg kinematics, Identification of kinematic parameters after the assembly of the robot, using monocular vision and ArUco markers, Trajectory tracking of the robot using the same set-up of monocular vision and ArUco markers
The waterproof skateboard wheels with hub motors were used. These were controlled with the speed and time period for the motors rotations which are defined by pulse-width modulation (PWM) signals from the micro-controller
Summary
Drains are an integral part of every modern city, where drainage systems are entirely subsurface in most countries. The large dimension quadruped robot equipped with drilling equipment and capable of walking on different terrains by incorporating impedance control for the foot-ground contact was reported in [19] These quadruped robots were mainly used in the fields like mine detection, walking uneven terrain, etc., but to access the drainage system with varying heights and cross-section, the robot should be designed to have the ability to reconfigure its morphology. Design of the robotic platform that can change its height and is holonomic, Formulation for kinematics of the wheeled locomotion coupled with the leg kinematics, Identification of kinematic parameters after the assembly of the robot, using monocular vision and ArUco markers, Trajectory tracking of the robot using the same set-up of monocular vision and ArUco markers.
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