Functional Design of a Hybrid Leg-Wheel-Track Ground Mobile Robot

This paper presents the conceptual and functional design of a novel hybrid leg-wheel-track ground mobile robot for surveillance and inspection, named WheTLHLoc (Wheel-Track-Leg Hybrid Locomotion). The aim of the work is the development of a general-purpose platform capable of combining tracked locomotion on irregular and yielding terrains, wheeled locomotion with high energy efficiency on flat and compact grounds, and stair climbing/descent...