In this paper, a wheelchair robot equipped with new-style variable-geometry-tracked mechanism is proposed. This new-style mechanism can adapt to convex terrain and turn to concave geometry by active control of track tension, based on which the terrain adaptability of the wheelchair robot is improved. Aiming at climbing stairs, the transformation rule of robot configuration is presented, the description of passenger's attitude and action is established. Following that, the tip-over stability analysis and simulation are performed with Force-Angle stability measure, and the variation of the tip-over stability margin of the robot under different conditions of passenger's attitude and action during stair-climbing is obtained. The analysis and simulation results provide a valid reference to the wheelchair robot's potential application.
This paper introduces an originally designed wheelchair robot equipped with a novel type of Variable Geometry Single Tracked Mechanism (VGSTM) that can actively control the robot shape and the track tension. So it becomes possible to improve the obstacle clearing capability of the robot by adapting the robot shape for the obstacle. Tip-over and slippage for track typed mobile robots are intractable problems especially in stair-climbing, which is the most fundamental obstacle clearing performance of the wheelchair robot, because of the complex track-stair interaction. In this paper, a tip-over and slippage stability criterion is derived based on the geometric model, the static model, and the track-stair interaction analysis. The stability state of the wheelchair robot during stair-climbing is obtained by simulation.
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