Design and Development of a Mobile Platform Mimicking Skating With Continuous Contact

This paper describes skating locomotion in a straight line based on continuous contact of rollers with the surface. Two skates traverse in and out while changing their orientation. Net traction force is generated because of no-slip conditions of rollers at the contact. The two skates are in continuous contact with the surface and therefore the balancing problem is circumvented. Different designs are developed and evaluated in order to replicate the desired motion. A heuristic-based architecture is developed to move the robot in a straight line.