Introducing Climax: A novel strategy to a tri-wheel spiral robot

This paper describes a prototype and analytical studies of a tri-wheel spiral mobile robot. The robot can reach any desired point with a sequence of rotational movements. The robot has a simple actuation mechanism, consisting of three wheels mounted on a platform with axes fixed in 120◦ and a motor connected to each. Our approach introduces several new features such as simple repeated sequence of commands for steering and spiral motion, versus direct movement to target. The mathematical model of the robot is discussed, and a steering method is developed to achieve full motion capabilities. For a number of missions, it is shown experimentally that the proposed motion planning agrees well with the results. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.