Research On Telescopic Units And Double-tetrahedral Telescopic Mobile Mechanism

This paper presents three new practical configurations of telescopic unit, which have the advantages of large contraction ratio, simple structure and so on. What’s more, the newly-designed telescopic unit are applied to the design of double-tetrahedral mobile robot. Via the deformation of the telescopic units, the double-tetrahedral mobile robot can achieve local or global deformation, which we try to take advantage of to make it easy to be transported, deposited and hided. Meanwhile, it also enriches the movement patterns, and impoves the locomotion properites.Firstly, through the study of the structure characteristics of classical telescopic units, five new configurations of telescopic unit are proposed.(1) Multistage nesting telescopic unit based on screw drive;(2) Multistage synchronous telescopic unit based on screw drive;(3) Multistage iterative synchronous telescopic unit based on screw drive;(4) Multistage telescopic unit based on rack and pinion drive;(5) Multistage telescopic unit based on scissor-like theory. Through comparison and analysis, the first three configurations are chosen to be studied more deeply, whose prototypes are also developed.Secondly, the new configurations of telescopic unit are used to a new polyhedral mobile robot. A double-tetrahedral mobile mechanism based on telescopic units are developed, whose moving principle is that the center of mass (CM) of the mechanism moves out of the supporting area and makes it deformable and tip over through the controlling of the motion logic of each telescopic unit. The double-tetrahedral mobile mechanism not only verifies the feasibility of the new telescopic unit, but also helps to enhance researches of the deformation and moving capability of the deformable mobile mechanism.This work will provide the design basis for the follow-up research and development of telescopic units and polyhedral mobile mechanisms.