Abstract
Recently, various robots that perform in narrow indoor spaces such as factories and hospitals have been developed. To improve their operating efficiency, these robots demand an omnidirectional mobile mechanism that does not require large spaces to turn. However, existing omnidirectional mobile mechanisms mostly have trouble achieving stable movement, because they have small contact area with the ground. To overcome this problem, we propose a novel omnidirectional mobile robot, which advances by traveling waves. This robot achieves stable movement because of its large contact area, and can change its advance direction without causing friction with the ground. In this paper, we show the mechanism of the omnidirectional mobile robot. And then, we demonstrate the robot's performance by conducting a driving experiment.
