A Concept and Development of a Four Wheeled Reconfigurable Mobile Robot by Parallel Linkage Mechanism and an Influence of a Driving Wheel Sideslip on Grassy Slopes

A wheeled mobile robot is expected of a high speed exploration and low production costs compared with a crawler type of mobile robot. A four wheeled mobile robot has especially a simple driving mechanism and good maintenance characteristics. In the field of the farm machine, the four wheeled mobile robot on a rough terrain is expected as the farming autonomous robot. In this paper, a four wheeled reconfigurable mobile robot is developed for use on the rough terrain slope like a grassy slope. The developed mobile robot is composed of a four-wheels drive mechanism and active four legs by parallel linkage mechanism. The effectiveness of the developed mobile robot is shown in experimental results by grassy slope movement.