Tracked Locomotion Systems for Ground Mobile Robots: A Review

Bruzzone, Luca; Nodehi, Shahab E.; Fanghella, Pietro

doi:10.3390/machines10080648

Cited by 39 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 69 publications

(86 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…These robots are long and thin and have the advantages of tracked locomotion. Tracked robots [17] are particularly suitable for uneven and yielding grounds, thanks to their large contact surface with the terrain. On the other hand, their speed and efficiency are lower with respect to wheeled ones.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Porcospino, spined single-track mobile robot for inspection of narrow spaces

Nodehi,

Bruzzone,

Fanghella

2023

Robotica

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper discusses the design and the experimental tests on Porcospino, a bio-inspired single-track mobile robot for inspection of unstructured environments characterized by narrow spaces. It is an evolution of SnakeTrack, a single-track robot with steering capabilities; differently from SnakeTrack, the track modules of Porcospino are characterized by elastic spines, which improve traction on uneven and irregular terrains. The main body is a vertebral column, comprising a series of vertebrae connected by compliant joints and two end modules. Each end module carries two sprockets, sharing a common actuator, to drive the single peripherical track. Moreover, each end module hosts an actuator for track steering. The remaining mobilities of the vertebral column allow it to cope passively with the terrain profile, to enhance traction. The control unit, batteries, drivers, and environmental sensors are placed along the vertebral column. Both the end modules are equipped with a camera for intermittent vision, which is possible thanks to openings realized on the track modules. The experimental campaign on the first Porcospino prototype is discussed, highlighting the differences with its earlier version.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Porcospino, spined single-track mobile robot for inspection of narrow spaces

Nodehi,

Bruzzone,

Fanghella

2023

Robotica

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The fusion between leg and track locomotion to increase mobility in unstructured environments and soft terrains is an interesting point 15 . Leg track hybrid is fairly popular for difficult environments, provided that speed and energy efficiency are not crucial.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design of a special rigid wheel for traversing loose soil

El-Sheikh

2023

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Wheels play an important role in mobile robotics, wheelchairs and vehicles and represent an ideal solution for traversing rigid ground due to higher efficiency. Through traversing loose soil, the rigid wheels lose traction because of sinking and higher slip ratios. Therefore, the study suggests a new rigid wheel with a distinguished perimeter to increase mobility demands to overcome the previous inevitable concerns and clarifies its full detailed design. The lateral undulation locomotion of snakes inspired the author to introduce a new simple and affordable wheel design. The optimum values of the limbless creature movement on the sand are reflected in the geometrical parameters of the wheel, amplitude to wavelength ratio. In addition, the experimental work assessed the traveling performance of the fabricated wheel on the rigid ground and the sandy soil. The attained net traction and slip ratios approach the values of more complicated, expensive and heavier wheels that were used in farming and planetary exploration. Consequently, the wheel enables the wheeled locomotive to do missions on sandy soil with no trouble.

show abstract

“…Tracked robots working in rugged environments such as urban ruins or outdoor woodlands often use controllable flippers—also known as sub‐tracks—to promote their traversal capabilities (Bruzzone et al, 2022), as shown in Figure 1. However, these flippers require extra control efforts, making the articulated tracked robots harder to control compared with the ordinary ones.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geometry‐based flipper motion planning for articulated tracked robots traversing rough terrain in real‐time

Chen,

Huang,

Pan

et al. 2023

Journal of Field Robotics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Tracked robots operating on rough terrain are often equipped with controllable flippers to help themselves overcome large obstacles or gaps. How to automate the control of these auxiliary flippers to achieve autonomous traversal remains an open question, which still necessitates inefficient manual teleoperation in practice. To tackle this problem, this article presents a geometry‐based motion planning method for an articulated tracked robot to self‐control its flippers during autonomous or semiautonomous traversal over rough terrain in urban search and rescue environments. The proposed method is developed by combining dynamic programming with a novel geometry‐based pose prediction method of high computational efficiency, which is applicable for typical challenging rescue terrains, such as stairs, Stepfields, and rails. The efficient pose prediction method allows us to make thousands of predictions about the robot poses at future locations for given flipper configurations within the onboard sensor range. On the basis of such predictions, our method evaluates the entire discretized configuration space and thereby determines the optimal flipper motion online for a smooth traversal over the terrain. The overall planning algorithm is tested with both simulated and real‐world robots and compared with a reinforcement‐learning‐based method using the RoboCup Rescue Robot League standard testing scenarios. The experimental results show that our method enables the robots to automatically control the flippers, successfully go over challenging terrains, and outperform the baseline method in passing smoothness and robustness to different terrains.

show abstract

Tracked Locomotion Systems for Ground Mobile Robots: A Review

Cited by 39 publications

References 69 publications

Porcospino, spined single-track mobile robot for inspection of narrow spaces

Porcospino, spined single-track mobile robot for inspection of narrow spaces

Design of a special rigid wheel for traversing loose soil

Geometry‐based flipper motion planning for articulated tracked robots traversing rough terrain in real‐time

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About