Development of a stair-climbing robot using springs and planetary wheels

This paper presents a self-propelled travelling mechanism capable of climbing stairs without a sensor or judging algorithm. The developed leg-wheeled mobile robot, which is a type of mechanism to be adaptable to obstacles and to overcome the gravity, uses springs and planetary wheels. The spring is effective when the front wheels start climbing a stair and the planetary wheels with the functions to roll, walk, and jump, thereby passing through stairs and obstacles. A detail design has been performed and a test model has been constructed with a vast range of simulation analysis results. Also, the validity of the constructed test model has been verified through the experiments in climbing the stairs of high step.