Autonomous Stairs Ascending and Descending Algorithm for Tri-Star Wheeled Robot

In this paper, autonomous switching algorithm was developed for stairs detection and switching of three states: rolling, ascending and descending. Only the sensor information is enough for the robot to autonomously switch the different states. The most significance effect of the research is that the use of the proposed switching algorithm can avoid unnecessary computations and detection of the complete parameters of the staircase. The performance of the proposed algorithm is experimentally validated by using a proof-of-concept prototype. Experimental results confirm that the proposed tri-star wheeled robot can perform stairs ascending and descending by using the proposed stairs detection and switching algorithm.