Design and development of a leg-wheel hybrid robot “HyTRo-I”

This paper proposes a novel and mechanically decoupled leg and wheel hybrid transformable robot called HyTRo-I that combines two mobility concepts. For example, while wheeled vehicles shares higher speed than legged and tracked machines on a flat ground, they have relatively lower degree of flexibility than the other two on irregular terrain. The HyTRo-I robot evolves three motion modes: wheeled rolling, quadrupedal walking and leg-wheel hybrid mode. Despite the over-whelming complexity of obstacles, only several typical obstacles are selected for the study, which are stairs, large protrusions and ditches. Firstly, the transition locomotion mechanism between wheeled rolling mode and quadrupedal walking mode should be studied in detail. In the course of reciprocal transition locomotion, the static and reversible transformation gait not only guarantees the shifting stability and a small number of transition steps, but also the relatively balanced torque of joints. Secondly, after HyTRo-I converting to effective locomotion mode, the adaptive gait control strategies are proposed to traverse three types of obstacles. Finally, a serial of experiments were performed to verify the validity of the proposed transformation gait and adaptive step-up gaits.