Snake-like active wheel robot ACM-R4.1 with joint torque sensor and limiter

Abstract

There are many researches about mobile robot with a varied wheel. Mobile robots or mobilities with wheels such like a car or bike have non-holonomic constraint and then it is difficult to move toward wheel's axis direction. Namely, it is impossible to move toward omni-direction due to the constraints by wheel's mechanical structure. Omni-directional movement means the mobility can move toward any direction at anytime. This paper adapted link-driven spherical wheel as an omnidirectional wheel and solved singularity problem caused by mechanical structure of it. We developed omni-directional mobilities( SO(2) and SO(3)) installing link-driven spherical wheels and experimented omni-directional movement with designed controllers.