A Multi-modal Hybrid Robot with Enhanced Traversal Performance*

Current multi-modal hybrid robots with flight and wheeled modes have fallen into the dilemma that they can only avoid obstacles by re-taking off when encountering obstacles due to the poor performance of wheeled obstacle-crossing. To tackle this problem, this paper presents a novel multi-modal hybrid robot with the ability to actively adjust the wheel’s size, which is inspired by the behavior of the turtle’s legs when it encounters obstacles, to enhance the traversal performance. In detail, we describe the hardware design that allows the robot to achieve a modal switch between flight and wheeled modes through foldable structures and variable wheel diameters; then, we present the architecture to control these two morphing mechanisms. After that, we establish the theoretical kinematic models for both the foldable arm and variable wheel and carry out extensive experiments to test the performance of the foldable arm, the variable-diameter wheel, as well as the traversal performance of the robot. Experimental results show that the proposed multimodal robot can realize the function of a quadrotor, respond quickly with full-scale folding within 0.9 s, climb a maximum slope of 36°, and traverse narrow passageways, which exhibit superior mobility and environmental adaptability.