Mechanical Design of Joint Braking and Underactuated Mechanism of "Tri-Star3"; Horizontal Polyarticular Arm Equipped 3-Wheeled Expandable Mobile Robot

In this paper, a horizontal polyarticular expandable 3-wheeled planetary rover "Tri-Star3" is proposed. This expandable rover conjugates compact folded size with high stability on rough terrain. The design of braking mechanism in each arm's joint is explained in detail. Through experiments, we confirmed the effectiveness of: (i) the underactuated braking mechanism with optimal shape cam and (ii) the underactuated motion of the arm-wheel module. By using this the proposed system achieves omnidirectional mobility with light weight

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