Multi-terrain Quadrupedal-wheeled Robot Mechanism: Design, Modeling, and Analysis

Abstract

For a robot to navigate in terrains of rough and uneven topographies, its drives and controllers must generate and control large mechanical power with great precision. This paper is aimed at developing an autonomous robot with active-suspensions in form of a hybrid quadrupedal-wheel drive mechanism. This involves a computational approach to optimizing the development cost without compromising the system’s performance. Using the Solidworks CAD tool, auxiliary components were designed and integrated with the bed structure to form an actively suspended robot drive mechanism. Also, using the S-Math Computing tool, the robot’s suspension system was optimized, employing a four-bar mechanism. To enhance the compatibility of this design with the intended controller, some mathematical equations and numerical validations were formulated and solved. These included the modeling of tip-over stability and skid steering, the trendline equations for computing the angular positions of the suspension servomotors, and the computation of R2– values for determining the accuracy of these trendline equations. Using finite element analysis (FEA), we simulated the structural integrity of key sub-components of the final structure. The results show that our mechanical design is appropriate for developing an actively suspended robot that can efficiently navigate in different terrestrial sites and topographies.

An Algorithmic Approach to Adapting Edge-based Devices for Autonomous Robotic Navigation

“…To test our computational hypothesis, we adopted the robotic system that we developed in [4], as our experimental platform. The Fig.…”

“…2. The details of the underlying mechanics are given in [4]. Hence, the rest of this paper will focus on the formulation of parallel/objected-oriented mathematical algorithms that can be executed by mean of edge-computing to estimate and control the navigational status of our robot as an intelligent system.…”

“…In this paper, we propose an algorithmic approach to implementing edge-based intelligent motion control scheme for our quadrupedal-wheeled robot in [4]. The hardware components of the robot's control system include a system-on-chip computer and a microcontroller.…”

“…Our aim is to show how effectively an edge-computing device could be adapted for point-to-point autonomous navigation of a mobile robot. This involves physical improvements on the robotic system developed by us in [4], development of the controller, and formulation of relevant parallel computation and control algorithms using objectoriented (OOP) programming techniques.…”