Flexible suspension mechanism for stable driving of a differential drive mobile robot

Abstract

The differential drive mechanism, which is one of the mechanisms of wheeled mobile robots, is simple and useful for the motion of the mobile robot. The mechanism, however, has typical disadvantages of losing mobility, falling down, etc. when the robot moves over obstacles or uneven terrains. A novel suspension mechanism presented in this paper was designed to help the robot to overcome these problems. In particular, this mechanism is very suitable for a tall robot, which is susceptible to overturning because of the disturbance caused by acceleration, deceleration, and collision. The proposed mechanism called a Multilayered Suspension Mechanism is composed of the effective and well-directed combination of springs and dampers. It is very simple and cost-effective since it has no actuator for suspension. In this paper, mechanical construction and characteristics of the mechanism are described. Then, excellence and performance of the proposed mechanism are demonstrated by simulations and experiments.