A Wheel-Claw Hybrid Manipulator and its Grasping Stability for the Mobile Robot Rolling/Crawling Along Flexible Cable

A new type of wheel-claw hybrid manipulator for the mobile robot rolling/crawling along flexible cable with obstacles is put forward in this paper. First design the schematic of such wheel-claw hybrid manipulator, which is consisted of one driving wheel-claw and driving unit, and seven driven wheel-claws. Second, derive the static force and moment equilibrium equations of the hybrid manipulator. Then, adopt the grasping stability configuration theory of multi-fingered robotic hands to obtain its grasping stability evaluation function. Last optimize the stable grasping conditions of such wheel-claw hybrid manipulator by utilizing stability performance evaluating indicators. The proposed wheel-crawl hybrid manipulator is available for stably grasping the flexible cable and the obstacles along the moving flexible path.