Basic running test of the cylindrical tracked vehicle with sideways mobility

— In this paper, the basic running performance of the cylindrical tracked vehicle with sideways mobility is presented. The crawler mechanism is of circular cross-section and has active rolling axes at the center of the circles. Conventional crawler mechanisms can support massive loads, but cannot produce sideways motion. Additionally, previous crawler edges sink undesirably on soft ground, particularly when the vehicle body is subject to a sideways tilt. The proposed design solves these drawbacks by adopting a circular cross-section crawler. A prototype. Basic motion experiments with confirm the novel properties of this mechanism: sideways motion and robustness against edge-sink.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: IROS
• Authors: Kenjiro Tadakuma, Riichiro Tadakuma, Keiji Nagatani, Kazuya Yoshida, Aigo Ming, Makoto Shimojo, Karl Iagnemma
• Keywords: Circular Cross-section, Crawler Mechanisms, IROS 2009, Robotics, Sideways Motion