PaTS-Wheel: A Passively-Transformable Single-Part Wheel for Mobile Robot Navigation

T. Godden*, B. W. Mulvey*, E. Redgrave and T. Nanayakkara, “PaTS-Wheel: A Passively-Transformable Single-Part Wheel for Mobile Robot Navigation on Unstructured Terrain,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2024. Link to paper: Digital Object Identifier: Abstract: Most mobile robots use wheels that perform well on even and structured ground, like in factories and warehouses. However, they face challenges traversing unstructured terrain such as stepped obstacles. This paper presents the design and testing of the PaTS-Wheel: a Passively-Transformable Single-part Wheel that can transform to render hooks when presented with obstacles. The passive rendering of this useful morphological feature is guided purely by the geometry of the obstacle. The energy consumption and vibrational profile of the PaTS-Wheel on flat ground is comparable to a standard wheel of the same size. In addition, our novel wheel design was tested traversi