Innovation design on walking structure of diameter-changeable wheel robot

Abstract

Walking structure is one of the significant research projects among some of the autonomous mobile robots studies. The content of the studies include the maneuverability of veer , the magnitude of driving force, the capability to adapt to the situation of the roadway and to cross the obstacles. A design was proposed in this paper that the diameter of wheel was changeable. The robot can adjust itself to different situation of the roadway through the change of the diameter of the wheels. The design has a lot of utility value. For example, the robot with changeable diameter is faster than the quadruped one, and it is stronger than the track mobile robot on the ability of cross barriers. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.