Omnidirectional Mobile Platform for Research and Development

Abstract

We detail an omnidirectional mobile platform for research and development (R&D). In 1995, we reported that a special driving mechanism for holonomic omnidirectional mobile robots was designed to enable 3 degree of freedom (DOF) motion control by 3 corresponding actuators decoupled with no redundancy. We constructed a omnidirectional mobile robot prototype with a drive. We took part in a RoboCup tournament as Uttori United with omnidirectional mobile robots: ZEN-450, using our driving mechanism, in 1997, and 2000. ZEN-450 showed high mobility during the tournament However, unpredictable problems occurred because ZEN-450 is not developed for robotic soccer. , We considered improving its hardware as a platform. We report the new platform and test-running results.