Actual Research Technology and Perspective of Reconfigurable Wheel-Tracked Locomotion Systems for Ground Mobile Platforms

Possessing the efficiency of wheels and the mobility of tracks, reconfigurable wheel-tracked locomotion system has been equipped on robots and specialized ground vehicles as a key technology to improve the overall maneuverability performance of vehicles in extreme environment. In this paper, based on analyzing in-country and overseas recent relevant researches, the different tracks systems were classified according to their reconfiguration principles firstly. And then, comparing and analyzing emphatically on the structure features and applications of different track models, its development and current researches were reviewed and summarize. Finally, the technological difficulties and prospective of the reconfigurable wheel-tracked locomotion system were proposed.