Design and performance analysis of an adaptive omnidirectional wheel for heavy payload robot

Purpose With the development of automation technology, the accuracy, bearing capacity and self-adaptation requirements of wheeled mobile robots are more and more demanding under various complex conditions, which will urge designers such shortcomings as the low accuracy, poor flexibility and weak obstacle crossing ability of traditional heavy haul vehicles and improve the wear resistance and bearing capacity of traditional omnidirectional wheels. Design/methodology/approach The optimal configuration for heavy payload transportation is obtained by building sliding friction consumption model of traditional wheels with different driving types based on Hertz tangential contact theory. The heavy payload omnidirectional wheel with a double-wheel steering and a coupled differential wheel driving is designed with the optimal configuration. The wheel consists of a differential gear train unit and a nonindependent suspension unit. Kinematics model of the wheel is established and relative parameters are optimized. Findings The prototype experiments show that the wheel has higher motion accuracy and environment adaptability. The results are consistent with the theoretical calculation, which show that the accuracy is more than 50% higher than that of differential prototype. The motion stability and the accuracy of the coupled differential omnidirectional wheel are better than those of the traditional omnidirectional wheels during the moving and obstacle crossing process under complex conditions, which verifies the correctness and advantages of the design. Originality/value Aiming at the specific application of heavy payload omnidirectional transportation, a new omnidirectional mobile mechanism with a two-wheel coupling drive structure and an adaptive mechanism is proposed. The simulation and experimental results show that it can realize the high-precision heavy-load omnidirectional movement, the effective contact with the ground and improve the adaptability to the rugged ground. It is flexible, simple and modular and can be widely applied to transportation, exploration, detection and other related industrial fields.