Development of Off-road Vehicle with Rotating Crawlers (Part 1)

Mechanism of the Vehicle and Characteristics of its Running Device

Abstract

Many concepts of the vehicle used for off-road locomotion have been considered and the author has tried to develop a vehicle with 4 rotating crawlers. The vehicle overcomes rough terrains or obstacles by the following track-system motion; each crawler housing is rotated around the center of its driven shaft and changes road clearance. A differential gear is used to connect the rotating shafts of right and left crawlers to bring the both crawlers into contact with the ground and keep chassis horizontal. In this paper, the structural and mechanical characteristics of the vehicle are discussed and the ground contact loads of each crawler are analyzed.