This document presents an overview of techniques for an important class of manipulation problems in mobile robotics, odometry calibration and error modeling for wheeled vehicles.

Gaits study is a fundamental part of legged vehicle research. Legged locomotion has been used by biological systems for hundreds of millions of years In contrast, wheeled locomotion vehicles have only a history of several thousand years. Wheeled vehicles are so familiar and ubiquitours in our modern way of life, and have been developed to such level of sophistication. But, approximately half of...

Less than half the Earth's landmass is accessible to existing wheeled and tracked vehicles. But people and animals using their legs can go almost anywhere. Our mission at Boston Dynamics is to develop a new breed of rough-terrain robots that capture the mobility, autonomy and speed of living creatures. Such robots will travel in outdoor terrain that is too steep, rutted, rocky, wet, muddy, and ...

BACKGROUND Morbidity and mortality of all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes have been studied, as well as the association of helmet use and head injury. HYPOTHESIS/PURPOSE The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast the patterns of extremity fractures associated with ATVs and dirt bikes. We believe there will be unique and potentially preventable injury patterns associated with dirt bi...

The Articulated Wheeled Vehicle (AWV) paradigm examines a class of wheeled vehicles where the chassis is connected via articulated chains to a set of ground-contact wheels. Activelyor passivelycontrolled articulations can help alter wheel placement with respect to chassis during locomotion, endowing the vehicle with significant reconfigurability and redundancy. The ensuing ‘leg-wheeled’ systems...

The United States Army began developing Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV) in the early 1900’s. Concurrently, researchers developed and enhanced passenger and commercial ground vehicles. Although significant progress has been made for improving vehicle mobility for all ground vehicles throughout the past century, mobility has lacked a concise mutually agreed definition and analytical standardized c...

The Articulated Wheeled Vehicle (AWV) paradigm examines a class of wheeled vehicles where the chassis is connected via articulated chains to a set of ground-contact wheels. Activelyor passivelycontrolled articulations can help alter wheel placement with respect to chassis during locomotion, endowing the vehicle with significant reconfigurability and redundancy. The ensuing ‘leg-wheeled’ systems...

Abstract: Two-wheeled self-balancing vehicles have been extensively used because of their unique capabilities such as reducing the traffic problems and being environment friendly. The main challenge in these vehicles is to design robust controllers capable of creating smooth and safe movement. This paper focuses on design of such a controller using the feedback linearisation technique. The mode...