Design and Development of an Agile, Man Portable Unmanned Ground Vehicle

Abstract

An omnidirectional unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) is able to move in any planar direction regardless of its current pose. To date, nearly all designs and analyses of omnidirectional robots have considered the case of motion on flat, smooth terrain. This paper presents the design, analysis, and prototype development of a man portable omnidirectional UGV designed for operation in rough terrain. Design guidelines are presented that are derived from geometric constraints on wheel and linkage sizes. The effects of terrain roughness and loss of wheel contact on UGV mobility are also analyzed. A framework for UGV design optimization is presented that considers vehicle kinematic isotropy, wheel-terrain interaction properties, predicted obstacle traversability, and maximum traversable distance over various outdoor terrain types. The results are used to design two small (i.e. 1m characteristic length), lightweight (i.e. approximately 25 kg) UGV prototypes. 1.