KINEMATIC MODELING, ANALYSIS AND CONTROL OF HIGHLY RECONFIGURABLE ARTICULATED WHEELED VEHICLES

The Articulated Wheeled Vehicle (AWV) paradigm examines a class of wheeled vehicles where the chassis is connected via articulated chains to a set of ground-contact wheels. Actively- or passively- controlled articulations can help alter wheel placement with respect to chassis during locomotion, endowing the vehicle with significant reconfigurability and redundancy. The ensuing ‘leg-wheeled’ systems exploit these capabilities to realize significant advantages (improved stability, obstacle surmounting capability, enhanced robustness) over both traditional wheeledand/or legged-systems in a range of uneven-terrain locomotion applications. In our previous work, we exploited the reconfiguration capabilities of a planar AWR to achieve internal shape regulation, secondary to a trajectory-following task. In this work, we extend these capabilities to the full 3D case – in order to utilize the full potential of kinematic- and actuationredundancy to enhance rough-terrain locomotion.

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