Force display consisting of a wheeled motion base — Expanding mobility from 3-DOF to 6-DOF

Force display is an important element to set up a user-friendly man-machine interaction system (e. g. haptic interface system). To display force easily and conveniently by means of a simple mechanism, we focus attention on the static characteristics of an omnidirectional mobile robot. This paper presents development of a prototype of a planar 3-DOF wheeled motion base consisting of omnidirectional mechanism, and the some experiments to estimate performance of the force display. In addition, for realizing a widely applicable motion base, a spacial 6-DOF motion base mechanically-expanded from the planar 3-DOF one is proposed and prototyped.