Development of a lightweight multipurpose high mobility vehicle for use in confined spaces

The main idea of the research was to develop a lightweight, multipurpose vehicle with high energy efficiency and low power consumption. To be able to develop and build a multipurpose vehicle the mobile platform was equipped with a five degree of freedom (DOF) serial robot for manipulating small parts or assemblies. Because the main idea was to manipulate object into tight spaces the mobility of the robot is provided by Mecanum wheels. This type of wheel is used for the locomotion system. Because the energy consumption is a changeling task in developing a mobile robot choosing the wright type of electrical motors is an important step when designing the entire robotic platform. After creating a mathematical model needed for torque determination during robot locomotion the equations were tested and validated using MATLAB – Simulink and Simscape Multibody environment. In Simulink and Simscape Multibody environment a dynamic model of the mobile platform was create in order to validate the mathematical model necessary for actuation torque determination. To command and control the serial robotic structure mounted onto the mobile platform the inverse kinematics of the five DOF serial robot was developed.