Innovative design of a claw-wheel transformable robot

Abstract

This research develops a claw-wheel transformable robot which could move on flat ground, stairways, or uneven terrain environment efficiently with a fairly simple structure. The robot can switch between claw mode and wheel mode by folding and unfolding the front body and rear body of the robot. The transformation could be made by controlling the motors on a pitch joint through the front claw and rear one in 90° angle shift after folding. The claw mode is mainly used to cross various uneven terrain or climb stairways. Yet, the wheel mode is for moving on flat ground. This robot can be adaptive to various riser and tread of stairs by appropriately controlling the transformation mechanism. Testing and verification have been done both in numerical simulation and the field test on the developed prototype. Compared with the existing hybrid robots, it has been proved to be well adaptive to various environments, structurally simple, easy to control and light in weight.