Step Climbing of a Wheelchair Using a Wheeled Robot with Passive Joint Manipulators

Abstract

This paper proposes a method of wheelchair's step climbing using a wheeled robot which has two manipulators. The robot, TATEYAMA, has been developed to assist wheelchair users. In step climbing, the wheelchair and the robot are connected by the manipulators, and the shoulder and elbow joints of the manipulators are passively controlled. As it is important to control the link angle for the safe step climbing, we perform a numerical calculation to clarify its requirements. The system uses the robot's body to pin the passive rotary motions of the shoulder links during the pushing motion of the wheelchair. We ascertain the effectiveness of this method by the experiments.