Designing for uniform mobility using holonomicity

Holonomic systems are often complex and expensive with poor terrain handling capabilities. This paper introduces HAMR, a platform that is simple and low-cost with good terrain handling capabilities which was designed using a new method for characterizing mobility. A mobility ellipsoid (analogous to a manipulability ellipsoid) is introduced as a design tool. A metric called holonomicity measures the extent to which a vehicle can move equally in all directions. The holonomicity of HAMR is measured experimentally. It is shown that non-holonomic vehicles can have relatively high holonomicity as well.