Scube—Concept and Implementation of a Self-balancing, Autonomous Mobility Device for Personal Transport

Abstract

Public transportation (PT) systems suffer from disutility compared to private transportation due to the inability to provide passengers with a door-to-door service, referred to as the first/last mile problem. Personal mobility devices (PMDs) are thought to improve PT service quality by closing this first/last mile gap. However, current PMDs are generally driven manually by the rider and require a learning phase for safe vehicle operation. Additionally, most PMDs require a standing riding position and are not easily accessible to elderly people or persons with disabilities. In this paper, the concept of an autonomously operating mobility device is introduced. The visionary concept is designed as an on-demand transportation service which transports people for short to medium distances and increases the accessibility to public transport. The device is envisioned to be operated as a larger fleet and does not belong to an individual person. The vehicle features an electric powertrain and a one-axle self-balancing design with a small footprint. It provides one seat for a passenger and a tilt mechanism that is designed to improve the ride comfort and safety at horizontal curves. An affordable 3D-camera system is used for autonomous localization and navigation. For the evaluation and demonstration of the concept, a functional prototype is implemented.

Watch the Next Step: A Comprehensive Survey of Stair-Climbing Vehicles

“…Scewo Bro [25] Robotics 2023, 12, x FOR PEER REVIEW 5 of 43 comprise the competitions. They apply the most modern powered devices such as prostheses, wearable exoskeletons, wheelchairs and functional electrical stimulation, as well as novel brain-computer interfaces to remove barriers between the public, people with disabilities and science.…”

“…Scewo Bro [25] Commercial solution, automatic stairclimbing system, selfbalancing software control, high safety TopChair-S [26] Commercial solution, automatic stairclimbing system, selfbalancing software control WT Wheelchair [27,28] Prototype solution, manual stair-climbing system, no selfbalancing control system…”

“…Adapted with permission ref. [34] 2017 Janez Podobnik 10 Prototype solution, automatic stairclimbing system, selfbalancing software control, Chebyshevbased linkage mechanism for lifting and lowering the tracks Most of the solutions [25,26,29,30,33,34] use wheels as preferred locomotion mode on regular flat ground while the track-based system is stowed under the carriage. Obstacle negotiation is performed in track locomotion mode: the position of the tracks is changed so that they are lowered to the ground while wheels detach from the ground.…”

“…Instead, in [27,30,33] a reconfigurable track-based system is proposed to prepare the robot to negotiate stairs: in WT-Wheelchair internal linkages, positions are changed while front and rear flipper angulation are used in B-Free Ranger and Fortissimo. The wheelchair-type robots that participated in the Cybathlon are: Scewo Bro [25], B-Free Ranger [30], ZED evolution [31], Caterwil GTS5 Lux [32], Fortissimo [33], Hkust [33], All-Terrain Wheelchair [34].…”

“…Articulated mechanism-based robots are mainly concentrated in the range of values that varies between 0 and 3 [s The NWC of carrier type robots is presented in Figure 5. ; Lawn [52]; Morales [51]; RT-Mover PType WA [48][49][50]; WL-16 II [45,46]; Lee [47]; Zero Carrier [41,42]; Wheelchiar.q [37,38]; iBOT 4000 [35,36]; All-Terrain Wheelchair [34]; Caterwill GTS5 Lux [32]; B-Free Ranger [30]; Tao [29]; WT-Wheelchair [27,28]; TopChair-S [26]; Scewo Bro [25].…”