The kinematic design of the OmniPede: a new approach to obstacle traversion

Introduces the kinematic design of a vehicle capable of traversing extremely rugged terrain, such as the rubble of a collapsed building. The vehicle, called "OmniPede," is being developed at the University of Michigan\´s Mobile Robotics Laboratory. The foremost innovation in the OmniPede is its kinematic design: the OmniPede can be thought of as an elongated, round, flexible body that has a large number of small "hands" or "feet" all over its hull ("skin"). Ideally these hands all perform a coordinated shoveling motion that provides forward propulsion wherever a hand is in contact with any feature in the environment, regardless of how many of the hands make contact and which ones do.