An Experimental Investigation on Novel Segmented Omni Wheeled Hybrid Mobile Robot to Assess Obstacle Climbing Capability

This article introduces a novel quadrupedal hybrid mobile robot with a segmented omni wheel design capable of climbing obstacles of height greater than its wheel radius. The unique wheel design comprises two parallel coaxial 240-deg segmented omni wheels per leg with independent offset angle control. The transformation from wheel to leg mode and vice versa can be seamlessly achieved by controlling the offset angle between the segmented omni wheels. A series of experiments are carried out to evaluate the robot's performance for obstacle climbing capability utilizing various wheel end effector designs, and a comparative analysis is presented. The results indicate that the obstacle climbing capability of segmented omni wheel design with zero offset angle is improved by 40.7% compared to standard wheel, and the unique wheel design configuration facilitates seamless staircase climbing capability without any complex control scheme. In addition, statistical studies using the Taguchi method and analysis of variance (ANOVA) are performed on the experimental findings. A linear regression model to predict power consumption has been developed, and the significant factors influencing the robot's power consumption and stability are presented.