Related papers: OmniWheg: An Omnidirectional Wheel-Leg Transformab…
This article presents the design, implementation, and performance evaluation of SWheg, a novel modular wheel-leg transformable robot family with minimalist actuator realization. SWheg takes advantage of both wheeled and legged locomotion by…
Wheeled robots are highly efficient in human living environments. However, conventional wheeled designs, limited by degrees of freedom, struggle to meet varying footprint needs and achieve omnidirectional mobility. This paper proposes a…
Wheeled robots are highly efficient in human living environments. However, conventional wheeled designs, with their limited degrees of freedom and constraints in robot configuration, struggle to simultaneously achieve stability,…
Wheel-legged robots with integrated manipulators hold great promise for mobile manipulation in logistics, industrial automation, and human-robot collaboration. However, unified control of such systems remains challenging due to the…
Robots excel at avoiding obstacles but struggle to traverse complex 3-D terrain with cluttered large obstacles. By contrast, insects like cockroaches excel at doing so. Recent research in our lab elucidated how locomotor transitions emerge…
This paper presents a novel modular robot system that can self-reconfigure to achieve omnidirectional movements for collaborative object transportation. Each robotic module is equipped with a steerable omni-wheel for navigation and is…
This paper introduces two field transportation robots. Both robots are equipped with transformable wheel-leg modules, which can smoothly switch between operation modes and can work in various challenging terrains. SWhegPro, with six…
In recent years, autonomous mobile platforms are finding an increasing range of applications in inspection or surveillance tasks, or to the transport of objects, in places such as smart warehouses, factories or hospitals. In these…
Wheeled-legged robots have the potential for highly agile and versatile locomotion. The combination of legs and wheels might be a solution for any real-world application requiring rapid, and long-distance mobility skills on challenging…
A mobility mechanism for robots to be used in tight spaces shared with people requires it to have a small footprint, to move omnidirectionally, as well as to be highly maneuverable. However, currently there exist few such mobility…
This article propose a whole-body impedance coordinative control framework for a wheel-legged humanoid robot to achieve adaptability on complex terrains while maintaining robot upper body stability. The framework contains a bi-level control…
Origami-inspired robots with multiple advantages, such as being lightweight, requiring less assembly, and exhibiting exceptional deformability, have received substantial and sustained attention. However, the existing origami-inspired robots…
This paper presents a novel design of a crawler robot which is capable of transforming its chassis from an Omni crawler mode to a large-sized wheel mode using a novel mechanism. The transformation occurs without any additional actuators.…
We show dynamic locomotion strategies for wheeled quadrupedal robots, which combine the advantages of both walking and driving. The developed optimization framework tightly integrates the additional degrees of freedom introduced by the…
Complex multibody legged robots can have complex rotational control challenges. In this paper, we propose a concise way to understand and formulate a \emph{whole-body orientation} that (i) depends on system configuration only and not a…
In this paper, we propose a novel approach on controlling wheel-legged quadrupedal robots using pose optimization and force control via quadratic programming (QP). Our method allows the robot to leverage the whole-body motion and the wheel…
Wheeled-legged robots combine the energy efficiency of wheeled locomotion with the terrain adaptability of legged systems, making them promising platforms for agile mobility in complex and dynamic environments. However, enabling…
This paper introduces a new wheel-legged robot and develops motion controllers based on central pattern generators (CPGs) for the robot to navigate over a range of terrains. A transformable leg-wheel design is considered and characterized…
Compared to conventional wheeled transportation systems designed for flat surfaces, soft robots exhibit exceptional adaptability to various terrains, enabling stable movement in complex environments. However, due to the risk of collision…
Wheel-legged robots integrate leg agility on rough terrain with wheel efficiency on flat ground. However, most existing designs do not fully capitalize on the benefits of both legged and wheeled structures, which limits overall system…