Crawler Mechanism with Circular Section to Realize a Sideling Motion
Kenjiro Tadakuma, Riichiro Tadakuma, Keiji Nagatani, Kazuya Yoshida, Karl Iagnemma · 2008
In this paper, a novel crawler mechanism for a sideling motion is presented. The crawler mechanism has a circular section and has active rolling axes at the center of the circles. Conventional crawler mechanism can convey heavy weigh, however they can not move to side. And previous crawler unit sinks into the soft ground when it whole body is inclined during moving. The proposed design solves this drawback by means of a circular section. An actual prototype model has been developed to illustrate the concept and to perform preliminary motion experiments, through which the basic performance of the Crawler Vehicle with this proposed Omni-Crawler mechanism was confirmed. An prototype has been developed to illustrate the concept. Motion experiments, with a test vehicle are also presented.