A leg-wheel robot-based approach to the solution of flipper-track robot kinematics

This paper presents the method of solving kinematics of a flipper-track robot. A general kinematics framework based on the screw theory is introduced for the leg-wheel robots. Focusing on the contact point between a flipper and the ground surface, the flipper-track robot kinematics is presented with the equivalent hybrid leg-wheel robot kinematics. For a studied four flipper-track robot, several robot control modes and corresponding kinematics solutions are identified. The algorithm for robot posture and tracking control is presented respecting robot's mechanical constraints. The kinematics and robot posture control were tested by simulation on a virtual robot in the MATLAB-ODE simulation environment.