Development of an omnidirectional mobile platform

A novel omnidirectional wheeled mechanism, named as MY wheel, is developed based on the sliced ball structure in this paper. With mutual passive motion of two sliced balls on the same one active axis, an omnidirectional motion can be achieved. The passive rotational axes of two sliced balls are inclined with 45 degree in two parallel planes, which are perpendicular to the active axis, to realize continuous contact with the ground. This wheeled mechanism also improves the wheel intensity to carry a heavy burden, which is a key problem for omnidirectional mechanism. An omnidirectional mobile platform composed of three MY wheels is developed for validating MY wheel mechanism. Kinematic analyses are presented to verify the omnidirectional movement of this platform. Experimental results show the validity of this platform.