The paper presented the driving mechanism structure of unmanned ground vehicle. The most fundamental feature of mobile platform has the transformable crawler. The crawler system transforms the shape of the track based on a driving mechanism. By adopting a double shaft structure to simply the crawler system was UGV platform. A automatic transmission is built to increase driving torque of unmanned ground vehicle. Available driving modes include a speed mode to drive at top speed on flat surfaces and a torque mode to handle uneven terrain, obstacles and stairs. The double shaft Also UGV platform was tested on uneven surfaces including muddy, sandy, and gravelly terrain. The UGV platform has shown good results in the driving test.
When problems occurred in the unstable and/or extreme terrain environment, formal field-driving robots were unable to provide any other options such as the transformation of the wheel and body structure, and so on. For such reason, this paper proposed a novel type of integrated wheel mechanism that can be operated as a conventional driving wheel mode and hybrid wheel-leg mode in order to be negotiated in an unstable terrain environment. The mechanical effect of the proposed variable wheel mechanism was analyzed considering the geometric constraint and power requirement of the actuator for the transformation. In addition, we designed and manufactured the prototype of field-driving robot, which reliably control the variable wheel shape. Finally, the effectiveness of the variable wheel mechanism was verified by preliminary experimental approach.
Due to the limited pendulum motion range, the conventional one-pendulum driven spherical robot has limited driving capability. Especially it can not drive parallel direction with center horizontal axis to which pendulum is attached from stationary state. To overcome the limited driving capability of one-pendulum driven spherical robot, we introduce a spherical robot, called KisBot II, with a new type of curved two-pendulum driving mechanism. A cross-shape frame of the robot is located horizontally in the center of the robot. The main axis of the frame is connected to the outer shell, and each curved pendulum is connected to the end of the other axis of the frame respectively. The main axis and pendulums can rotate 360 degrees inside the sphere orthogonally without interfering with each other, also the two pendulums can rotate identically or independent of each other. Due to this driving mechanism, KisBot II has various motion generation abilities, including a fast steering, turning capability in place and during travelling, and four directions including forward, backward, left, and right from stationary status. Experiments for several motions verify the driving efficiency of the proposed spherical robot.
In this paper, a new driving mechanism of security robots which should overcome obstacles with stability even though moving in high speed is introduced. The driving mechanism has spring-based suspension and two wheels positively necessary to overcome obstacles. From the driving mechanism, it is mainly discussed how we can decrease overshoot and impulse occurred when the robot is in the process of overcoming obstacles. Finally, design parameters of the driving mechanism which guarantees stable motion while overcoming obstacles is deduced based on simulation results. Experiments are also followed to demonstrate how well the manufactured system works in its early stage of the practical use.