Design of a Configurable All Terrain Mobile Robot Platform

摘要

With the increased funding from various agencies, research conducted in the field of mobile robotics has significantly increased during the last couple of decades. Due to wide range of applications mobile robots of different sizes and capabilities are required in the field. Despite the wide spectrum of applications to be developed for mobile robots, available platforms on the market for research purposes are very few in number, and limited in their capability for multi-purpose use. Evidently purchasing new platforms for different applications is not a feasible solution for conducting research. Driven by the motive of having a configurable research platform, a mobile robot referred to as CoMoRAT (Configurable Mobile Robot for All Terrain Applications) has been designed and manufactured at METU. CoMoRAT can be driven by wheels, tracks or both. Besides its ability to ride effectively on various terrains, robot body is designed in such a way that adding new hardware to the platform requires minimal manufacturing and installation effort. This paper presents the design and construction details as well as the performance tests conducted on CoMoRAT.