Experiments of Omnidirectional Vehicle moving in Rough Terrain with Spiral Mecanum Wheels

Abstract

The vehicle using omnidirectional wheels can go in narrow space and realize speedup of the work because it can move laterally. But the Mecanum Wheel as an example of omnidirectional wheel is unsuitable for rough terrain now. In this paper, we designed the new Mecanum Wheel which has spiral structure and performed the experiment using the prototype to compare the kinematic performance for each of the wheels. As a result, the vehicle with Spiral Mecanum Wheel could climb the higher step than conventional Mecanum Wheel. Especially in normal direction, the type B wheel could climb the higher step.