An optimization design method for the mechanism parameters of an amphibious transformable robot

This paper presents an optimal design method for a new robot called amphibious transformable robot which can not only perform reconfiguration but also implement tasks in amphibious environment. To satisfy a range of performance requirements for the robot in aquatic and terrestrial environments, the multi-objective optimization method is adopted to design the robot which can achieve the optimal comprehensive performance in the amphibious environment. Based on the kinematics and dynamic analysis of the robot, the multi-objective optimization problem of the mechanism parameters design is established on the mapping relationships between the performance indexes, and then Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm is proposed to get Pareto solution. Based on combination weighting method of multi-attribute decision-making, the result can be extracted and used to direct the mechanism design of the amphibious transformable robot, Amoeba-II. The experiment for the maneuverability of Amoeba-II in the amphibious environment is performed to verify the validity and applicability of the mechanism-parameters design method of amphibious transformable robot based on Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm.