A Stair-Climbing Robot with Star-wheel Configuration

Abstract

This paper proposes a four-wheel mobile robot that uses passive star-wheel configuration to climb stairs. Without adding any control complexity, the robot can climb a standard indoor staircase of 15 x 28cm at a speed of 0.7 <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$s$</tex> / step. For stairs of other sizes, it also has a certain adaptability, avoiding the problem of slipping when using active star-wheel to climb stairs. This paper analyzes the obstacle-surmounting conditions of the four-star-wheel robot during stair climbing, and uses statics to calculate the driving torque. We use simulation to validate the torque consumption study, and prove the stability of the robot's central trajectory during stair climbing. These results provide a basis to quantify the robot's stair-climbing capability under certain load. We build an robot prototype platform and conduct physical experimentation to validate the robot performance.