Terramechanics Analysis of Moving Mechanism with Reconfigurable Wheel-track

The wheel-track robot is an innovative type of mobile robot combining the wheel and the track in one part. This innovative form of movement could move quickly and flexibly, meanwhile, could easily climbing obstacles. In this paper, a moving mechanism with reconfigurable wheel-track which fully integrates the wheel mechanism and the track mechanism is designed. To study the interaction between the wheel and the ground, it is necessary to analyze both the pressure process and the shear process. With the terramechanics analysis of the reconfigurable wheel-track, the wheel-terrain interaction model and the track-terrain interaction model are proposed. The two models are simulated using MATLAB to obtain sinkage and stress distribution. Through the traction characteristics obtained by simulation, the passing ability of the moving mechanism reconfigurable wheel-track on different soft ground is analyzed.