An omnidirectional screw‐driven forestry robot

Abstract

Screw‐driven robot possesses outstanding omnidirectional mobility. Due to the friction between wheels and the ground, the screw‐driven robot can traverse rough terrain flexibly. This paper proposes a screw‐driven robot, which is equipped with four screws wheels. The directions of thread between adjacent screws are opposite to each other. By controlling the rotating speed and direction of the wheels, the omnidirectional traction could be generated, so the robot possesses the omnidirectional mobility in the field. The robot can work in two locomotion modes, the screw‐driven mode and the wheel‐driven mode. In addition, the robot can be used for the forestry information‐collecting tasks, which improve the efficiency of the forestry task. Two prototypes are fabricated. A series of experiments and field tests are conducted, and the results verify that the robot can traverse rough terrain with the omnidirectional mobility.