Energy Consumption of a Wheel/Track Reconfigurable Mobile Robot on the Farm

This paper presents the experimental results of energy consumption of a wheel/track reconfigurable mobile robot which has been developed for maintenance of vineyard. According to the Bekker's soil model, the wheel rolling resistance depends on the sinkage to the ground, so that the mobile mechanism consists of 2 rear wheels and 2 front tracks which is designed to lift up and down and control the contact area to the ground and to switch the modes based on the soil conditions to minimize energy consumption. The wheel mode is supposed to be operated for the firm soil where the front tracks are lifted up to decrease the contact area, and the track mode is for the soft soil where the front tracks push down the ground and increase the contact area and decrease sinkage. In the experiment, we compared the energy consumption between the wheel mode and the track mode in firm, soft, and wet soil conditions.