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ICRA 2026
Trajectory Design Trade-Offs in a 1-DoF Transformable Wheel for Obstacle Climbing
Jaebaek Lee, Youngsoo Kim
AI summary
Trajectory parameters for 1-DoF transformable wheels create distinct, non-overlapping trade-off regions for smoothness, torque, and power that are accurately predicted by simulation and validated on hardware.
Problem
Prior research on transformable wheels prioritizes mechanism design over trajectory planning, leaving a critical gap in understanding how motion timing and posture coordination affect the trade-offs among climbing smoothness, actuator load, and power demand.
Approach
The authors parameterize obstacle-climbing motion using three intuitive trajectory variables and map their effects on performance through closed-form kinematics, quasi-static torque modeling, and a full factorial design-space exploration, followed by hardware validation.
Key results
- Full factorial evaluation of 125,000 trajectories revealing distinct optimization regions for smoothness, torque, and power
- Acceleration-optimized designs favoring small pivoting angles and long transformation intervals
- Torque-optimized designs exploiting kinematic singularities to minimize transformation torque
- Experimental validation confirming simulation-predicted trade-off structures with R² = 0.64–0.90
Why it matters
Enables robot designers to systematically select trajectory parameters and size actuators for low-DoF transformable-wheel mobile robots navigating structured obstacles.
Abstract
No abstract on file.