Self-adaptive obstacle crossing of an AntiBot from reconfiguration control and mechanical adaptation

Song, Z; Luo, Z; Wei, G; Shang, J

Abstract

One drawback of wheeled robots is hard to conquer large obstacles and perform well on complicated terrains, which limits its application in rescue missions. To provide a solution to this issue, an ant-like six-wheeled reconfigurable robot, called AntiBot, is proposed in this paper, which employs a Sarrus reconfiguration body, a three-rocker-leg passive suspension and mechanical adaptable obstacle-climbing wheeled-legs. In this paper, we demonstrate through simulations and experiments that this robot can change the position of its centre of mass actively to improve its obstacle crossing capability. The geometric and static stability conditions for obstacle crossing of the robot are derived and formulated, and numerical simulations are conducted to find the feasible region of the robot's configuration in obstacle crossing. In addition, a self-adaptive obstacle crossing algorithm is proposed to improve the robot's obstacle crossing performance. A physical prototype is developed, and based on which a series of experiments are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed self-adaptive obstacle crossing algorithm.

Citation

Song, Z., Luo, Z., Wei, G., & Shang, J. (2023). Self-adaptive obstacle crossing of an AntiBot from reconfiguration control and mechanical adaptation. Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics, 1-82. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4056601

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 30, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Jan 4, 2023
• Publication Date: Jan 4, 2023
• Deposit Date: Feb 2, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 5, 2024
• Journal: Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics
• Print ISSN: 1942-4302
• Electronic ISSN: 1942-4310
• Publisher: American Society of Mechanical Engineers
• Pages: 1-82
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4056601
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4056601