A New High Load Capacity Hybrid Locomotion Robot Capable to Climb Staircases

Architectural barriers still exists for the wheelchair users in many cities and buildings, and it is very difficult to eliminate all of them. There have been a number of wheelchairs designs that claim to overpass these barriers. The authors of this paper believe that most of these designs have serious problems related to: its low payload capacity, the lack of safety or its impossibility to overpass a wide variety of obstacles. This paper describes the mechanical devices of a novel wheelchair capable of climbing most common obstacles a wheelchair could face in modern cities. The key feature of the mechanical design is the use of two decoupled mechanisms: one to climb a single step, and other one to positioning these climbing mechanisms into the staircase, ensuring stability. This decoupling makes possible many different climbing strategies becoming the overall mechanism extraordinary versatile. This paper will show some strategies that could make the overall control of the systems easier. Some experimental results of the climbing process for different obstacles are also presented in order to emphasize the proper environment adaptation of this novel wheelchair.