The Wheel-legged Robot for Guanular Terrain: Guardian

Abstract

Wheeled robots have been wildly used in challenging terrain exploration due to their stability, simplicity, and flexibility. In this paper, a novel wheel-legged series robot is designed to achieve autonomous locomotion in various fields. The four-wheel-legged robot, Guardian, is implemented with a unique mechanical structure to ensure the ability of moving in granular terrain. It has four legs which are designed by connecting rods, and each leg has four degrees of freedom. Experiments are carried out to evaluate performance of the robot in various scenarios, including planar omni-directional motion, climbing over obstacles, and moving in granular media. By measuring traction force of the robot with different gait, the superiority of the robot in granular media movement has been showed.