BASIC STUDY ON AN AGRICULTRAL WALKING VEHICLE

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This research has been done to observe the capability of applying a walking mechanism to the agricultural transportation vehicle. The following items were done during the given period of study.1.Decision of mechanism for a walking vehicle. Based on some information from previous studies on walking robots, we have decided the number of leg to be 4, the number of DOF per leg is 3. We employed the pantograph mechanism for the leg.2.Manufacturing of experimental walking vehicle. We have designed a prototype vehicle where the unit structure was employed. After walking experiment for initial model, we modified more powerful motor unit for body elevation. Quadruped walking gait was found by try-and-error method which turned out to be almost the same as wave gait.3.Discussion on control system and walking pattern. We have developed a motor-control program for mounted computer system. By using the modified walking vehicle, the walking velocity was about 0.23cm/sec for straight walk. We further … More realized the lateral walking and the rotational walking by our vehicle. Moreover, we added some sensors to measure distributed body load and body gradient angle and results showed that the translation of C.G. must be done by considering the feedback of information from the load cell systems.4.Discussion on surrounding environmental status detection. Ultrasonic sensor was firstly applied to check the capability of detecting plane surface, grooved surface and step. The result told us that the application of ultrasonic sensor is not suitable for sudden change of environments. Later, we applied the stereo image processing system to measure the length of particular point on a soil surface. We found that this system will be applicable to the walking vehicle system.5.Summary. We have developed an experimental walking vehicle. In future agriculture, there may be the chance of application especially in the situation of no-paved road conventional agricultural machinery. Further research should be concentrated on the applied walking on not only flat terrain but also on the slope. Less