Design and Control of Multi-mode Wheeled-Bipedal Robot with Parallel Mechanism

• Published in: 2023 International Conference on Communications, Computing and Artificial Intelligence (CCCAI) pp. 69 - 74
• Main Authors: Yang, Zeyi, Bian, Zekun, Zhang, Wei
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.06.2023
• Subjects: balancing control; Design methodology; Energy efficiency; Hardware; Legged locomotion; multimode robot; robot system design; Switches; Telecommunication computing; wheeled-bipedal robot; Wheels
• DOI: 10.1109/CCCAI59026.2023.00021

Wheeled-bipedal robot is a kind of mobile robot to combine the advantages of wheeled and legged locomotion. However, existing wheeled bipedal robots often require effort to overcome gravity while they do not need to maintain a standing position all the time. Therefore, we design a multimode motor-driven wheeled-bipedal robot SUSTech-Nezha II to explore the fusion of wheel and leg. The robot has two mirror symmetric legs with a total of six degrees of freedom. A novel five-bar linkage mechanism has been integrated into the design of the leg for the purpose of transmission. The robot has two modes of motion: the wheeled-bipedal mode and the four-wheel mode. The robot primarily operates in the four-wheel mode, as it provides superior stability and energy efficiency compared to the wheeled-bipedal mode. The latter mode is only utilized when height adjustments are necessary. This paper introduces the design and control methods of the overall robotic system. The control strategy for seamless mode switching is also developed. Finally, we verify the feasibility of the whole system through several hardware experiments.