In this video, a novel tracked mechanism for sideways motion is presented. The tracked mechanism is of circular cross-section and has active rolling axes at the center of the circles. Conventional tracked mechanisms can support massive loads, but cannot produce sideways motion. Additionally, previous crawler edges sink undesirably on soft ground, particularly when the vehicle body is subject to a sideways tilt. The proposed design solves these drawbacks by adopting a circular cross-section crawler. A prototype has been developed to illustrate the concept. Motion experiments confirm the novel properties of this mechanism: sideways motion and robustness against edge-sink. Motion experiments, with a test vehicle are also presented.

An omnidirectional mobile robot is able, kinematically, to move in any planar direction regardless of current pose. To date, nearly all designs and analyses of omnidirectional robots have considered the case of motion on flat, smooth terrain. This paper presents design constraints and guidelines for designing an omnidirectional mobile robot propelled by active split offset casters to be driven in rough terrain. Geometric constraints on wheel and linkage sizes are presented. The effects of terrain roughness and loss of wheel contact are analyzed. The vehicle design is optimized for kinematic isotropy, ability to maintain ground contact, traversable obstacle height, and maximum traversable distance over four diverse terrain types. The results are contrasted with a baseline design.

In this paper, a novel crawler mechanism for sideways motion is presented. The crawler mechanism is of circular cross-section and has active rolling axes at the center of the circles. Conventional crawler mechanisms can support massive loads, but cannot produce sideways motion. Additionally, previous crawler edges sink undesirably on soft ground, particularly when the vehicle body is subject to a sideways tilt. The proposed design solves these drawbacks by adopting a circular cross-section crawler. A prototype has been developed to illustrate the concept. Motion experiments confirm the novel properties of this mechanism: sideways motion and robustness against edge-sink. Motion experiments, with a test vehicle are also presented.

An omnidirectional mobile robot is able, kinematically, to move in any direction regardless of current pose. To date, nearly all designs and analyses of omnidirectional robots have considered the case of motion on flat, smooth terrain. This paper presents a kinematic analysis and control method for an omnidirectional mobile robot driven by active split offset casters operating on rough, uneven terrain. Robot average isotropy is analyzed as a function of wheel module geometry on both flat and rough terrain. A simple kinematic control scheme that considers the effects of terrain unevenness is presented. The performance of the algorithm in rough terrain is studied in simulation. It is shown that with knowledge of terrain conditions, near- omnidirectional mobility is achievable in rough terrain.