Abstract
This paper describes about the design of the variable geometry tracked vehicle(VGTV) for the purpose of the disaster response robot. The VGTV is suitable for the traversing on rough terrain at the point that can transform a track shape depending on a terrain variation. We studied the crawler type mobile robot with a passive sub-crawler. By utilizing an advantage of passive sub-crawler, the new design of VGTV with passivity and the tension control mechanism using the U type flat spring are proposed in this paper. We analyzed the relation of the tracked length and tension by the numerical simulation.
