Design, Control and Simulation of a Leg-Wheel Robot: STransleg

A versatile leg-wheel robot called STransleg is proposed in this paper. STransleg is propelled by four identical leg-wheel mechanisms, which can transform between the legged and wheeled modes. The leg has three active joints in the legged mode, and the wheel is active in the wheeled mode. The waist yaw and pitch joints are introduced to STransleg to improve the locomotion flexibility and stability. In this paper, the design and kinematics modeling methods of STransleg are described. Additionally, the control method is proposed for STransleg to make it do the four-wheeled locomotion, walking locomotion, and carriage-like locomotion. The simulations are carried out to make the dynamical model of STransleg do the different locomotion, and the results verify the feasibility of the robot design method and the proposed control method.