Action planner of hybrid leg-wheel robots for lunar and planetary exploration

— In this paper, we propose an action planning algorithm and its evaluation method based on dynamic simulation for a novel type of hybrid leg-wheel rover for planetary exploration. Hybrid leg-wheel robots are recently receiving a growing interest from the space community to explore planets, since they offer an appropriate solution to gain improved speed and mobility on unstructured terrain. However, in order to fully reach the hybrid mechanism’s potential, it is necessary to establish an optimal way to define when to use one over the other locomotion mode, depending on the soil conditions and topology. Even though this step is crucial, little attention has been devoted to this topic by the robotic community. The switching of motion mode, that is either wheel or leg are the actions to be planned, that we are considering in this paper. We aim at generating the safest and the least energy demanding path to reach a point of scientific interest. In order to define the optimal path wi...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: IROS
• Authors: Eric Rohmer, Giulio Reina, Genya Ishigami, Keiji Nagatani, Kazuya Yoshida
• Keywords: Action Planning Algorithm, Candidate Path, Energy Demanding Path, IROS 2008, Robotics