Design of a wheel-type mobile robot for rough terrain

Abstract

In order to work in the rough terrains, the mechanisms of mobile robot have been proposed including wheeled, legged, crawler and so on. In this paper, we design a special wheel type mobile platform named iRP (intelligent Rover Platform). It has two different float suspension mechanisms with six wheels. The suspension systems allow all six wheels to remain on the ground even if any single wheel is raised about 100mm higher than the other five wheels. Based on these mechanisms it can span the more rough terrain. A tablet PC is used for the center controller because it integrates abundant sensors and communication modules. In addition, the tablet PC can realize harmonious man-machine interaction. iRP can be applied to guiding, detecting and inspection and so on.