A New Steering Mechanism Using Non-Circular Gears : 2nd Report, Trial Manufacture and Experiments

Abstract

This paper deals with experiments of the new steering mechanism which has been proposed in the first report. First of all, the elliptical gears for the steering mechanism were cut with the NC gear shaper developed by the authors, and the error of the rotational angles of the elliptical gears was measured. Then, the authors manufactured a wheeled robot for trial in order to confirm the usefulness of this steering mechanism and succeeded in controlling the wheeled robot using a TV camera for eyes. Moreover, they carried out fundamental experiments. These experiments proved that the new steering mechanism had high turning ability, and can turn the wheeled robot with the small radius.