Abstract
Robot locomotion has been a key focus of research in the past few years, with them being more integrated into our daily lives. Travelling across uneven terrain still poses a significant challenge to many robots, especially in exploring over a cluttered environment during a natural disaster or over rough and soft surfaces during space exploration. Hence, there has been an increasing need for robots with obstacle climbing and locomotion capability to traverse such environments. In this dissertation, we seek to design and develop a four Wheg robot leg, named Dart, with the intend of fast and agile movement over a variety terrain. A new petal shape compliant Wheg design is proposed with a backbone structure to provide rigidity along its transverse direction. This design allows us to reduce the amount of energy required to propel the robot forward and climb obstacles of up to 1.5 times higher than conventional wheel systems of similar wheel dimension. Detail analysis was discussed and performed to determine a set of parameters for its design. A variety of prototype was developed, and field experiments conducted to verify its performance over flat, uneven, and loose surfaces, which are surfaces present in outdoor environments and as well as its obstacle climbing capability. Lastly, we discuss how Dart is eventually going to penetrate the market. This is done by looking at what benefits Dart brings. Following that, different market strategies are also looked further investigated to give various possible possibilities for diversification. This will show why Dart is feasible for many different robots to use in the market and how it is profitable.