Development of a single actuator wheel robot with mechanical scalability and flexibility

Abstract

In general, small robots can operate in narrow spaces, and large robots can traverse over rough terrains. Although a few robots with adjustable wheel diameter have been developed, they require multiple actuators for rotating the wheels and changing the wheel diameter. This paper proposes a wheel robot that can adjust the wheel diameter according to the wheel rotation. The robot uses a centrifugal force-aided diameter adjustable mechanism; the wheel diameter is expanded/contracted by a circular pantograph via the centrifugal force. Thus, the wheel diameter can be changed depending on the drive of the wheel. We adopt the circular pantograph mechanism to maintain the round shape of the wheel during expansion and contraction. We conducted experiments with the developed robot and found that the wheel diameter appropriately changes with the wheel acceleration and deceleration. The results show that the proposed mechanism improves the performance when climbing a step and operating in a narrow space. Further, the robot also had mechanical flexibility, which helps reduce the impact when facing a step. These characteristics could be achieved because the wheel was passively and adaptively deformed according to the running environment.