Proposal of variable rigidity wheel with petal-shaped expansion mechanism and hard and soft alternating composition tread

Abstract

A new wheel was proposed with the aim of developing a practical rescue robot. It is equipped with a hard and soft alternating tread and a petal-shaped expansion mechanism. Hard and soft alternating tread is hard to break and has flexible characteristics. Petal-shaped expansion mechanism can switch the characteristics of hardening and softening. Therefore, airless variable rigidity wheels were realized from these. Furthermore, the developed wheels were mounted on a 4-wheel UGV. Then, the running performance was verified by conducting a towing experiment in an environment simulating the disaster area. As a result, it was shown that the running performance was improved by switching the wheel mode.