Scout robot with wheeling-hopping combination locomotion

Purpose ‐ The purpose of this paper is to present a new scout robot that tries to combine the hopping movement and the wheeling movement to greatly enlarge the scope of robot's activities. Design/methodology/approach ‐ A five-shank hopping mechanism was employed to build the wheeling-hopping combination scout robot. The non-linear character of the five-shank hopping mechanism was analyzed and then used in the proposed non-linear spring-mass model for the robot. Findings ‐ The rules of robot's movement were deduced, influencing factors of the jumping height were analyzed and the countermeasure was adopted. Simulations and an experiment of the robot's movement showed that the robot has strong locomotivity and survival ability. Originality/value ‐ A five-shank hopping mechanism is proposed, analyzed and combined with wheeling movement to enhance the locomotivity and survival ability of scout robot.