Abstract
There are many mechanisms aiming at leveling run among wheel type mobile robots. The reason is that high efficiency is realized by wheels at leveling run. However, the limitation of step height is determined by the radius of the wheel. Therefore, the operating environment of the robots may be restricted. So, we proposed a Transformable Flexible Wheel (TFW) whose belt transforms by contacting one step. According to this mechanism, the mobile robots can travel across one step without control and sensors. In this paper, we discuss that the TFW is superior to a general wheel from calculation of static equilibrium. Then, we developed a wheel type mobile robot using four TFWs, and conducted an experiment using the robot. From the experiment, it was shown that TFW is effective for travel one step.
