Development of flexible wheel structure adapted in complicated 3 dimensional environment

Abstract

A new wheel mechanism of a snake-shaped robot adapted for moving in a complicated 3D environment is developed. The wheel consists of a torus shape of which the surface itself rotates around the larger diameter circle of the torus and moves toward the direction of the axis of the torus. The mechanism is studied and proved to be feasible and by constructing the actual model to work as is expected.