Development of a control system of an omni-directional vehicle with a step climbing ability

Abstract

We proposed a new holonomic mobile mechanism which is capable of running over the step. This mechanism realizes omni-directional motion on flat floor and passes over non-flat ground in forward or backward direction. The vehicle equips seven omni-directional wheels with cylindrical free rollers and two passive body axis that provide to change the shape of the body on the rough terrain. This paper presents a method to control the wheels for passing over rough terrain with the stable posture. Our vehicle is required to keep synchronization among its wheels for climbing the step without slipping and blocking. Therefore, in this paper, an algorithm of synchronization among all wheels is proposed. The performance of our system is experimented by means of computer simulations and experiments using our prototype vehicle. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.