AbstractIn this study, a new type of active-caster with a single ball transmission (ACROBAT-S) was proposed. The proposed ball transmission involved a novel mechanism that realized to control the active-caster for propelling robotic platforms. The combined power from two motors rotated a single ball in two dimensions. Additionally, the combined power was simultaneously decomposed to the wheel shaft and steering shaft of an active-caster in an appropriate ratio. The transmission design enabled an omnidirectional robot with three active-casters to control its 3D motion by three motors with no redundancy. The new concept of ACROBAT-S offers several advantages as compared to the previous ACROBAT design as the number of balls was reduced from two to one, and therefore the number of friction drives between a ball and rollers or a ball and another ball was also reduced from five to three. These features could contribute to simplifying the mechanism design and to reduce transmission slippages and energy losses. T...
['Kosuke Kato', 'Masayoshi Wada']
Kinematic analysis and simulation of active-caster robotic drive with ball transmission (ACROBAT-S)