Amphibious Robot With Self-Rotating Paddle-Wheel Mechanism

Marine transportation is an important means of transportation, in which ships are in constant use and accidents are unavoidable. In this article, we developed an amphibious robot to help rescue people in an accidental environment that is too low or dangerous for rescuers to enter. Angled spoke paddling wheel (ASPW) makes it possible to drive on the water surface, while taking advantage of the angled spoke wheel (ASW). The ASPW changes the paddle force by rotating the paddle when the wheel rotates so that the total force is generated in the direction of the robot's movement. The paddle is optimized using the Taguchi method. The driving experiment was conducted in four environments: ground, water surface, transition between ground and water, and obstacle overcoming situation. The maximum driving speed was 0.47 m/s on the ground and 0.1 m/s on the water surface. The maximum average inclination degree in the transition situation was 25
$^{\circ }$
from the ground to the water surface and 20
$^{\circ }$
from the water surface to the ground. In addition, it was possible to overcome an obstacle with a maximum height of 41.3 mm, demonstrating that the proposed robot excels in amphibious driving, while possessing the ability to overcome the ASW level obstacle.