Development and Analysis of a Wheel-Legged Mobile Robot for Ground and Rail Inspection.

In order to combine the advantages of rail-type inspection robot and wheeled inspection robot, this paper proposes a modular wheel-legged robot (Mobot-H) for ground and rail inspection. The robot has the characteristics of high mobility, over-obstacle and multi-purpose. Firstly, The robot system is introduced. Mobot-H is composed of joint modules, wheel-footed modules, and body modules, which can be reconstructed into various configurations and has three different motion modes. Secondly, the over-obstacle motion of Mobot-H is introduced on the ground, and the limit and center of gravity of over-obstacle are deeply analyzed. The working principle of the robot is introduced on the rail, its motion characteristics are analyzed and its steering motion model is established. Finally, a series of prototype experiments and simulation experiments are designed.