Volatile oil prices and increased environmental sensitivity together with political concerns have moved the attention of governments, automobile manufacturers and customers to alternative power trains. From the actual point of view the most promising concepts for future passenger cars are based on the conversion of electrical into mechanical energy. In-wheel motors are an interesting concept to...

The focus of studies in the field of passive walking has often been on straight walking, while less attention has been paid to the field of turning motions. In this paper, the passive motions of a finite width rimless wheel as the simplest 3D model of passive biped walkers was investigated with a focus on turning motions. For this purpose, the hybrid model of the system consisting of continuous...

The United States Army began developing Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV) in the early 1900’s. Concurrently, researchers developed and enhanced passenger and commercial ground vehicles. Although significant progress has been made for improving vehicle mobility for all ground vehicles throughout the past century, mobility has lacked a concise mutually agreed definition and analytical standardized c...

This paper discusses the mechanical design and simulation of a novel omnidirectional wheel based on Reuleaux-triangles. The main feature of our omniwheel is that the point of contact of the wheel with the floor is always kept at the same distance from the center of rotation by mechanical means. This produces smooth translational movement on a flat surface, even when the profile of the complete ...

Abstract The 2D motion of a rigid rimless wheel on an inclined plane has been widely studied as first simple case passive walker. Usually, it is modelled hybrid dynamical system alternating continuous smooth phases and discrete impact ones. As in other bipedal walkers, the related research often devoted to analysis cyclic motions assumes that spoke-ground collision single-point one. This work f...

The martensitic transformation and the solidification structures of Mn49.3Ni43.7Sn7.0 alloy ribbons prepared by melt-spinning were investigated by means of scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and differential scanning calorimetry. In those experiments special attention was given to melt spinning processing parameters such as the linear surface speed of the copper wheel rotating, the...

The model of a bicycle is a unit segment AB that can move in the plane so that it remains tangent to the trajectory of point A (the rear wheel is fixed on the bicycle frame); the same model describes the hatchet planimeter. The trajectory of the front wheel and the initial position of the bicycle uniquely determine its motion and its terminal position; the monodromy map sending the initial posi...

Control of vehicle traction is of utmost importance in providing safety and obtaining desired vehicle motion in longitudinal and lateral vehicle control. Vehicle traction control systems can be designed to satisfy various objectives of a single vehicle system or a platoon of vehicles in an automated highway system, which include assuring ride quality and passenger comfort. Other objectives are ...