A Wheel-Legged Robot Capable of Autonomous Docking

This paper proposed a wheel-legged robot capable of autonomous docking and undocking operations. The system facilitates head-to-tail docking between two adjacent robots, enabling a transformation from the original two-wheeled legged robot configuration into a quadrupedal robotic system. The docking mechanism incorporates multiple degrees of freedom to achieve spine-like articulation, significantly enhancing the mobility and flexibility of the combined multi-legged robot. For the docking mechanism, we have completed both forward and inverse kinematic solutions and experimentally validated the control precision. For the overall motion control of the robot, we first used the ROS2-Gazebo platform to simulate and verify the motion of a single robot, and then performed physical prototype tests to verify the control algorithm. This work establishes a foundation for future integration between dual-wheeled and multi-wheeled legged robotic systems.