Experimental Investigation of a Passive Compliant Torsional Suspension for Curved-Spoke Wheel Stair Climbing
Curved-spoke wheels have been proposed as an effective way to overcome stair-like obstacles with smooth, rotation-only motion. However, when the wheel’s contact point shifts, discontinuous changes in its radius of curvature cause abrupt drops in the robot’s linear speed, often leading to reduced pay...
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MDPI AG
2025-05-01
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| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/15/11/5985 |
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| author | Sunbeom Jeong Youngsoo Kim |
| author_facet | Sunbeom Jeong Youngsoo Kim |
| author_sort | Sunbeom Jeong |
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| description | Curved-spoke wheels have been proposed as an effective way to overcome stair-like obstacles with smooth, rotation-only motion. However, when the wheel’s contact point shifts, discontinuous changes in its radius of curvature cause abrupt drops in the robot’s linear speed, often leading to reduced payload stability and slip. As a result, maintaining reliable stair climbing becomes more difficult. At higher speeds, these sudden changes become stronger, further reducing dynamic stability. To address these issues, we propose a passive Compliant Spiral Torsional Suspension (C-STS) attached to the wheel’s drive axis. Through camera-based marker tracking, we analyzed wheel trajectories under various stiffness and speed conditions. In particular, we define the deceleration caused by the velocity drop during contact transitions as our dynamic stability metric and demonstrate that the C-STS significantly reduces this deceleration across low-, medium-, and high-speed climbing, based on comparisons both with and without the suspension. It also raises the average velocity, likely due to a brief release of stored elastic energy, and lowers the net torque requirement. Our findings show that the proposed C-STS greatly improves dynamic stability and suggest its potential for enhancing stair-climbing performance in curved-wheel-based robotic systems. Furthermore, our approach may extend to other reconfigurable wheels facing similar instabilities. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-e9f9da23e9b3455bb455aa3daa206b23 |
| institution | OA Journals |
| issn | 2076-3417 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-05-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
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| series | Applied Sciences |
| spelling | doaj-art-e9f9da23e9b3455bb455aa3daa206b232025-08-20T02:23:44ZengMDPI AGApplied Sciences2076-34172025-05-011511598510.3390/app15115985Experimental Investigation of a Passive Compliant Torsional Suspension for Curved-Spoke Wheel Stair ClimbingSunbeom Jeong0Youngsoo Kim1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pusan National University, Busan 46241, Republic of KoreaDepartment of Mechanical Engineering, Pusan National University, Busan 46241, Republic of KoreaCurved-spoke wheels have been proposed as an effective way to overcome stair-like obstacles with smooth, rotation-only motion. However, when the wheel’s contact point shifts, discontinuous changes in its radius of curvature cause abrupt drops in the robot’s linear speed, often leading to reduced payload stability and slip. As a result, maintaining reliable stair climbing becomes more difficult. At higher speeds, these sudden changes become stronger, further reducing dynamic stability. To address these issues, we propose a passive Compliant Spiral Torsional Suspension (C-STS) attached to the wheel’s drive axis. Through camera-based marker tracking, we analyzed wheel trajectories under various stiffness and speed conditions. In particular, we define the deceleration caused by the velocity drop during contact transitions as our dynamic stability metric and demonstrate that the C-STS significantly reduces this deceleration across low-, medium-, and high-speed climbing, based on comparisons both with and without the suspension. It also raises the average velocity, likely due to a brief release of stored elastic energy, and lowers the net torque requirement. Our findings show that the proposed C-STS greatly improves dynamic stability and suggest its potential for enhancing stair-climbing performance in curved-wheel-based robotic systems. Furthermore, our approach may extend to other reconfigurable wheels facing similar instabilities.https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/15/11/5985mobile robotcurved-spoke wheelstair obstaclecompliant mechanismsuspension mechanismdynamic stability |
| spellingShingle | Sunbeom Jeong Youngsoo Kim Experimental Investigation of a Passive Compliant Torsional Suspension for Curved-Spoke Wheel Stair Climbing Applied Sciences mobile robot curved-spoke wheel stair obstacle compliant mechanism suspension mechanism dynamic stability |
| title | Experimental Investigation of a Passive Compliant Torsional Suspension for Curved-Spoke Wheel Stair Climbing |
| title_full | Experimental Investigation of a Passive Compliant Torsional Suspension for Curved-Spoke Wheel Stair Climbing |
| title_fullStr | Experimental Investigation of a Passive Compliant Torsional Suspension for Curved-Spoke Wheel Stair Climbing |
| title_full_unstemmed | Experimental Investigation of a Passive Compliant Torsional Suspension for Curved-Spoke Wheel Stair Climbing |
| title_short | Experimental Investigation of a Passive Compliant Torsional Suspension for Curved-Spoke Wheel Stair Climbing |
| title_sort | experimental investigation of a passive compliant torsional suspension for curved spoke wheel stair climbing |
| topic | mobile robot curved-spoke wheel stair obstacle compliant mechanism suspension mechanism dynamic stability |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/15/11/5985 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT sunbeomjeong experimentalinvestigationofapassivecomplianttorsionalsuspensionforcurvedspokewheelstairclimbing AT youngsookim experimentalinvestigationofapassivecomplianttorsionalsuspensionforcurvedspokewheelstairclimbing |