Considerations for enhanced rough terrain mobility of kinematically redundant locomotion systems

Abstract Kinematically redundant locomotion systems offer significant potentials with regard to an enhanced mobility on rough and unstructured terrain. These potentials are based on the systems' modular design as well as the given kinematic redundancy. The available additional, i.e. redundant, degrees-of-freedom result in the system's extensive capabilities of posture as well as terrain adaptation. These capabilities can be used to enhance a robot's mobility performance with regard to a given performance metric like e.g. traction and power consumption. The paper at hand summarizes essential considerations with regard to the deployment of kinematic redundancy to achieve enhanced rough terrain mobility focusing on the mechanics of mobile robot posture adaptation and traction optimization.

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