Analysis and simulation for wheel-legged robot tumble stability

In uneven terrains, tumble stability is critical to a mobile robot. Aiming at the moving requests of miniature mobile robot on unstructured environment, a wheel-legged robotic platform with multi-configuration was developed. This reconfigurable robot has a symmetrical structure and four independent wheel-legged articulations which can generate a series of configurations. A dynamic energy stability pyramid and a tumble stability index were adopted to determine its stability comprehensively. Then, the robot stability in configuration change was discussed. And, the dynamic tumble stabilities of six typical configurations were studied when the inertial forces and road disturbances occurred. The analysis results imply that the multiple configurations can improve the tumble stability greatly.