• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.32-38
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• 2013

Small mobile robots which use round wheels are suitable for driving on a flat surface, but it cannot climb the obstacle whose height is greater than the radius of wheels. As an alternative, legged-wheels have been proposed by many researchers due to its better climbing performance. However, driving and climbing performances have a trade-off relationship so that their driving performance should be sacrificed. In this study, in order to achieve both driving and climbing performances, a new transformable wheel was developed. The developed transformable wheel can have a round shape on a flat surface and change its shape into legged-wheel when it makes a contact with an obstacle. For design of the transformable wheel, the performance of legged-wheel was analyzed with respect to the number and curvature of the leg, and then the new transformable wheel was designed based on the analysis. Contrary to the existing transformable wheels that contain additional actuators for the transformation, the developed transformable wheel can be unfolded without any additional actuator. In this study, in order to validate the transformable wheel, a simple robot platform was fabricated. Consequently, it climbed the obstacle whose height is 2.6 times greater than the wheel radius.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2013.05a
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• pp.881-882
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• 2013

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.186-190
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• 2019

When problems occurred in the unstable and/or extreme terrain environment, formal field-driving robots were unable to provide any other options such as the transformation of the wheel and body structure, and so on. For such reason, this paper proposed a novel type of integrated wheel mechanism that can be operated as a conventional driving wheel mode and hybrid wheel-leg mode in order to be negotiated in an unstable terrain environment. The mechanical effect of the proposed variable wheel mechanism was analyzed considering the geometric constraint and power requirement of the actuator for the transformation. In addition, we designed and manufactured the prototype of field-driving robot, which reliably control the variable wheel shape. Finally, the effectiveness of the variable wheel mechanism was verified by preliminary experimental approach.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.315-316
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• 2010

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.270-277
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• 2010

Various robot platforms have been designed and developed to perform given tasks in a hazardous environment for the purpose of surveillance, reconnaissance, search and rescue, and etc. We have considered a terrain adaptive hybrid robot platform which is equipped with rapid navigation on flat floors and good performance on overcoming stairs or obstacles. Since our special consideration is posed to its flexibility for real application, we devised a design of a transformable robot structure which consists of an ordinary wheeled structure to navigate fast on flat floor and a variable tracked structure to climb stairs effectively. Especially, track arms installed in front side, rear side, and mid side are used for navigation mode transition between flatland navigation and stairs climbing. The mode transition is determined and implemented by adaptive driving mode control of mobile robot. The wheel and track hybrid mobile platform apparatus applied off-road driving mechanism for various professional service robots is verified through experiments for navigation performance in real and test-bed environment.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.391-395
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• 2010

In our paper, we propose an asymmetric single-tracked wheel system, and describe its structure and the method for maintaining the length of a transformable track system. And the method is reducing the gap of lengths. Therefore, we propose an efficient structure for transforming and explain motions with kinematics. Our transformable shape single-tracked mobile system has an advantage to overcome an obstacle or stairs by the variable arms in the single unity track system. But we will make the variable shape of tracked system get a drive that has a force to stand against a wall. In this case, we can consider this system to a rigid body and have a notice that this single tracked system is able to get vary shape with the variable arm angle. Considering forces balance along x-axis and y-axis, and moments balance around the center of the mass we have. If this rigid body is standing against a wall and doesn't put in motion, the force of flat ground and the rigid body sets an equal by a friction. In the same way, the force of a wall and the rigid sets an equal by a friction.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.558-565
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• 2011

Various robot platforms have been designed and developed to perform given tasks in a hazardous environment for surveillance, reconnaissance, search and rescue, etc. We considered a terrain-adaptive and transformable hybrid robot platform that is equipped with rapid navigation capability on flat floors and good performance in overcoming stairs or obstacles. The navigation mode transition is determined and implemented by adaptive driving mode control of the mobile robot. In order to maximize the usability of wheel-track hybrid robot platform, we propose a terrain-adaptive and user-friendly remote controller and verify the efficiency and performance through its navigation performance experiments in real and test-bed environments.