Obstacle-surmounting Analysis of a Novel Deformable Wheel-track Composite Walking Platform

Based on high mobility requirements of unmanned ground platforms in various environments and combining the advantages of traditional wheeled, crawler and legged walking mechanisms, a novel deformable wheel-track composite walking mechanism with multi-movement modes is proposed,obtaining better obstacle-surmounting performances than the famous reconfigurable wheel-track mechanism(RWT type) in recent years. The walking mechanism has two stable forms of round wheel configuration and prolate polygon configuration with three modes of wheel rolling, track movement and gait rotation, which are respectively suitable for travelling on hard roads at high speeds, moving on soft earth with low contact pressure and crossing obstacles. Design of the innovative structure and a platform equipped with the novel machines is carried out. Subsequently, the platform's obstacle surmounting performance is analyzed through dynamic modelling and calculation. Ultimately to verify the advantages of the machine and its design rationality, comparative simulation experiments of obstacle-surmounting performances is implemented in the multi-body simulation environment,setting up obstacle models and building experimental platform models integrating this machine and the RWT type machine respectively.