A Portable Six-Wheeled Mobile Robot With Reconfigurable Body and Self-Adaptable Obstacle-Climbing Mechanisms

Abstract Mobile robots can replace rescuers in rescue and detection missions in complex and unstructured environments and draw the interest of many researchers. This paper presents a novel six-wheeled mobile robot with a reconfigurable body and self-adaptable obstacle-climbing mechanisms, which can reconfigure itself to three locomotion states to realize the advantages of terrain adaptability, obstacle-crossing ability, and portability. Design criteria and mechanical design of the proposed mobile robot are first presented, based on which the geometry of the robot is modeled and the geometric constraint, static conditions, and motion stability condition for obstacle crossing of the robot are derived and formulated. Numerical simulations are then conducted to verify the geometric passing capability, static passing capability, and motion stability and to find feasible structure parameters of the robot in obstacle crossing. Further, a physical prototype of the proposed mobile robot is developed and integrated with mechatronic systems and remote control. Using the prototype, field experiments are carried out to verify the feasibility of the proposed design and theoretical derivations. The results show that the proposed mobile robot satisfies all the criteria set and is feasible for applications in disastrous rescuing scenarios.