Application of Parallel Mechanism in Varistructured Quadruped/Biped Human-carrying Walking Chair Robot

For the existing problems of walking chair robot such as simple function, lower bearing capacity and not walking in complex environment, a novel varistructured quadruped/biped human-carrying walking chair robot is proposed. The proposed robot could be used as biped and quadruped walking chair robots. Considering the conversion of the walking chair robot from the quadruped to the biped or vice versa, 6-UPS and 2-UPS+UP (U, P and S are universal joint, the prismatic pair, and sphere joint, respectively) parallel mechanisms are selected as the leg mechanism of the biped walking robot and quadruped walking robot, respectively. Combining the screw theory and theory of mechanism, the degrees of freedom of the leg mechanism and the body mechanism in different motion states are computed so as to meet the requirements of mechanism design. The motion characteristics of the 2-UPS+UP parallel mechanism which is the key part of the walking chair robot are analyzed. Then, the workspace of the moving platform is drawn and the effect of the structural parameters on the workspace volume is studied. Finally, it is found that the volume of the workspace of the moving platform is bigger when the side length ratio and the vertex angle ratio of the fixed platform and the moving platform which are isosceles triangles are close to 1. This study provides a theoretical foundation for the prototype development.