Modified Mecanum Wheels for Traversing Rough Terrains

Mecanum wheels give vehicles and robots autonomous omni-directional capabilities, while regular wheels don´t. The omni-directionality that such wheels provide makes the vehicle extremely maneuverable, which could be very helpful in different indoor and outdoor applications. However, current Mecanum wheel designs can only operate on flat hard surfaces, and perform very poorly on rough terrains. This paper presents two modified Mecanum wheel designs targeted for complex rough terrains and discusses their advantages and disadvantages in comparison to regular Mecanum wheels. The wheels proposed here are particularly advantageous for overcoming obstacles up to 75% of the overall wheel diameter in lateral motion which significantly facilitates the lateral motion of vehicles on hard rough surfaces and soft soils such as sand which cannot be achieved using other types of wheels. The paper also presents control aspects that need to be considered when controlling autonomous vehicles/robots using the proposed wheels.