Posture control of a dual-crawler-driven robot

This paper deals with a tracked robot that consists of the proposed crawler module, in which a planetary gear reducer is used as the power transmission device to give two different outputs with just one actuator. This under-actuated system could perform posture control through the interaction between the front and rear modules. On occasion, the posture that the front module is lifted up can make the robot overcome obstacles actively and easily. To find out the controllable postures, the static analysis of the robot has been conducted. In this paper, we provide the control strategy for performing the posture control, and propose the control methods including direct, indirect, and cooperative control to conduct the posture control. Experimental tests show the effectiveness of the control methods.