Design and Realization of a Multimodal Wheel-Leg Hybrid Mobile Robot

A wheel-leg hybrid mobile robot with multi-motion morphology is designed for the high mobility and terrain adaptability needs of robots in unstructured environments. A single actuator can be used to realize the free switching of the robot's wheel-leg morphology, and the deformation mode of the wheel-leg varies with the rotation direction of the actuator. The parameters of the deformation mechanism were designed by establishing a mathematical model, the motor ability in different morphologies was analyzed, and kinematic simulations were carried out in ADAMS software. Finally, a physical prototype was fabricated and tested for motion in an unstructured environments to verify the practicality of the robot structure.