Hybrid Locomotion of a Mobile Parallel Robot with a Minimal Number of Motors

This paper presents several novel designs of hybrid locomotion for a mobile parallel robot. With the proposed hybrid locomotion, the robot can move by walking or on wheels. The novelty of the proposal is offering dual locomotion without adding more motors. This is achieved by introducing a switching clutch that can transmit the motor rotation to either the walking mechanism or the wheels. Two designs are proposed, namely: 1) hybrid locomotion with omnidirectional wheels and 2) hybrid locomotion with steered standard wheels. The latter design consists of two schemes: one with suction and another without suction. Each of the schemes may have one of four possible wheel configurations. Without adding more motors, a set of solenoids is required to activate the switching clutches, and additional transmission modules are needed to transmit the motors' rotation to the wheels. The use of a switching mechanism leads to a significantly suppressed cost of the robot as the main motors are much more expensive than the solenoids and the additional transmission components. The details of each design were presented in the paper, followed by a comparison between them. One may choose any of the designs depending on the requirements and needs. Furthermore, one may implement all the designs by exchanging the wheel assembly and its switching mechanism due to the modularity.