A Small Robot Based on Hybrid Wheel-Track Mechanism

A small guard robot working indoors or outdoors can be used to report various information on its environment to an operator. The guard robot should be small-sized and lightweight to increase its portability. In addition, it should be able to overcome a relatively high obstacle to cope with various situations. To satisfy these requirements, this paper presents a small robot equipped with a novel hybrid wheel and track mechanism that can select wheels or tracks depending on the situation. The robot folds the tracks into the body in the wheel mode and only wheels are active with the tracks immobilized, which results in the fast moving speed. In the track mode, the tracks are extended to keep in contact with the ground. Furthermore, this research proposes the belt length maintenance mechanism by which the belt length is kept constant in either the wheel or track mode. Various experiments demonstrate that the proposed robot can move fast by using wheels on the smooth terrain and overcome obstacles by using tracks on the rough terrain.