HeIse Wheels: a Family of Mechanisms for Implementing Variable Geometry Hybrid Wheels

This paper presents a family of mechanisms of two degrees of freedom for implementing variable geometry hybrid wheels. These mechanisms are capable of transforming a circular wheel into a hybrid wheel with multiple legs. In this paper we describe the main attributes and advantages of these mechanisms, which we named HeIse Wheels. In addition, various terms and concepts related to the mathematical modeling of these devices are defined. The family of mechanisms consists of 14 original designs, which represent a sound solution to the problem of wheel-hybrid wheel transformation.