Articulated Wheeled Vehicles: Back to the Future?

Articulated Wheeled Vehicles (AWVs) are a class of wheeled locomotion systems where the chassis is connected to a set of ground-contact wheels via activelyor passively-controlled articulations, which can regulate wheel placement with respect to chassis during locomotion. The ensuing leg-wheeled systems exploit the reconfigurability and redundancy to realize significant benefits (improved stability, obstacle surmounting capability, enhanced robustness) over both traditional wheeled-and/or legged-systems in a range of uneven-terrain locomotion applications. This article examines the history of such articulated-wheeled-vehicles leading up to the current day, while placing in context the pioneering and seminal contributions of Professor Kenneth Waldron and his students. Subsequently, we outline our own research efforts on variants of AWVs, including the creation of a systematic computational screw-theoretic framework to model, analyze, optimize and control such systems.