An agile assistant robot integrating operation and rolling locomotion

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose an agile assistant robot to be used as a mobile partner with two rotational motions and one translational motion. This robot possesses the rolling function and three operating abilities to assistant human beings in the industrial environment. Design/methodology/approach The main body of the robot is a typical 4-RSR (where R denotes a revolute joint and S denotes a spherical joint) parallel mechanism. The mechanism can reach any position on the ground by two rolling modes (the equivalent Watt linkage rolling mode and the equivalent 6R linkage rolling mode), and the robot can work as a spotlight or a worktable in operating modes at the target location. The mobility, rolling modes, operating modes and kinematics are analyzed. Findings Based on the results of kinematics of this assistant robot, the upper platform of the 4-RSR rolling mechanism has two rotational motions and one translational motion which can be used in the industry. The proposed concept is verified by experiments on a physical prototype. Practical implications This paper also discusses the application to industrial cases where cooperation between workers and robots is required. Originality/value The work presented in this paper is a novel exploration to apply parallel mechanisms to the field of assistant rolling robots. It is also a new attempt to use the rolling mechanism in the field of mobile operating robots for industry tasks.

Motion and path planning of a novel multi-mode mobile parallel robot based on chessboard-shaped grid division

“…To simplifying the kinematics analysis, contra-rotating the coordinate system by 45° at point O and getting the coordinate system O - mn . The motion specifications of the robot are shown in Table I (Li et al , 2017).…”

“…Tian et al (2017) put forward a parallel mechanism with variable topology such that it can operate either as an equivalent rolling robot or quadruped robot. Based on this, we propose a spatial 3-DOF rolling mechanism by a 4-RSR parallel mechanism, and the robot with rolling and operating integrated design possesses better adaptability and mobility in complex and unknown mobile environments (Li et al , 2017).…”

Soil profile analysis based on the identification of the bevametric parameters using cone penetrometer

“…The navigation in a rough environment supposes two phases to study the behavior of the wheel/soil systems (Li et al 2017;Wright et al 2017;Rios et al 2017;Rania et all 2022). The first step is the ground modeling, which corresponds in studying the soil reaction under various solicitations, and then the ground characterization.…”

Design and locomotion analysis of the tetrahedral mobile robot with only revolute joints (TMRR)

“…Inspired by the concept of parallel mechanism, a series of polyhedron mobile mechanisms with multi-chain were proposed and omni-directional rolling and folding function were realized (Liu et al , 2012; Tian and Yao, 2015; Li et al , 2017; Liu et al , 2019a; Liu et al , 2019b). Furthermore, the integration of multiple mobile modes was realized based on variable topology (Tian et al , 2017; Li et al , 2018).…”