2019 Volume 54 Issue 2 Pages 145-160
Vehicles are used to transport people and goods efficiently. In order to move smoothly, even in an environment with limited space or numerous obstacles, the vehicle that can not only move in the longitudinal direction and turn but also move in the lateral direction is required. In order to satisfy this requirement, wheel mechanisms for lateral movement, such as the active omni wheel (AOW), which is a wheel that is movable in an arbitrary direction actively, have been proposed. However, these wheel mechanisms require numerous motors to construct a vehicle, which leads to increased size, weight, and manufacturing cost of the vehicle. In order to address this problem, the present study proposes a drive mechanism for driving AOWs by a small number of motors using switchable clutches. Vehicles equipped with this drive mechanism can move in the longitudinal and lateral directions and turn by just one or two motors. In the present paper, the structure and motion of the proposed drive mechanism are explained. Through the kinematic analysis, the establishment condition is derived. Based on the results, several structures of vehicles equipped with the proposed mechanism are introduced. Experiments are conducted using the developed vehicle, and the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism is verified.
