Design of novel terrain adaptable cascading wheeled mobile platform with passive planetary swing structure

This paper describes the design principle and detailed considerations for a new developed wheel type mobile platform. The vehicle is designed as one of the choices for real practical use such as rescue or public security purpose. The vehicle utilizes eight big wheels and installs them into two side rows. All the wheels are densely cascading assembled and are nearly half overlapping with each other. A new planetary swing wheel structure is utilized in this vehicle, as a result of which, the necessary actuators for 8 active wheels are reduced to four. The planetary swing structure adjusts the relative posture to the vehicle´ chassis passively and automatically, according to the coming terrain situation, without using other mechanical swing structures or motion assistant mechanism. Mechanical discussion and analysis, such as the varieties of planetary swing structure, wheel distribution, are given in this paper. Also, in the later part, experimental tests are carried out to exam the traversing effect.