Development of a Mobile Reconfigurable Mecanum Robot with a Locking Device of Rollers

This paper presents the design and analysis of an omnidirectional reconfigurable wheeled robot capable of switching between omnidirectional and conventional wheeled mode. We have developed a new pneumatic locking mechanism of rollers for the mecanum wheel. In the mecanum mode, the robot can perform holonomic movements, and in the wheeled platform mode, it can overcome inclined surfaces and perform more energy-efficient movements. In addition, the locking device allows the robot to brake faster compared to other mecanum robots. Unlike other works describing the reconfigurable structure of the mecanum wheel, this work offers a new design characterized by the simplicity of the mechanism and does not require the location of active reconfiguration elements inside the wheel itself. The paper describes the design concept and presents the mechanism for locking rollers. The study evaluates the use of the developed robot in various scenarios, including movement on an inclined surface, sudden braking on a plane and an inclined surface, and also analyzes the energy efficiency of the resulting solution for some operating scenarios. The experiments carried out confirm that this mobile platform, when switching mode, is able to move on surfaces with a large angle of inclination and perform more effective deceleration on both flat and inclined surfaces.