Motivation and Design Considerations of a Compliant Mobile Base for Human-Centered Robots

Robotics is a growing field that has received tremendous support and focus in recent years. Backed by government and industry interests, robots now have the potential to move beyond traditional manufacturing setting into human-centered environments. Therefore, safety emerges as one of the most fundamental requirements in designing Human-Centered Robots (HCRs). To attain HCRs with high mobility and safe behaviors, we designed and built a torque-controlled omni-directional mobile base, Trikey 2012, at the Human-Centered Robotics Lab in Mechanical Engineering Department. Our design focused on reducing backlash, friction, uneven load distribution, and difficult assembly steps to create a high performance compliant mobile base for HCRs.