Functional Design of a Novel Over-Actuated Mobile Robotic Platform for Assistive Tasks

This paper presents a novel over-actuated mobile platform for assistive robotics tasks. Its main peculiarity is that of owning an innovative architecture expressly conceived to enhance the dynamics performance offered by the present-day solutions for omni-directional planar motions. The machine, named Paquitop_01, is aimed at living and working in a domestic, non-structured, and variously populated environment. Such premise is a crucial point within the design process, from either the mechanical, or the control point of view, for it arises a set of uncharted challenges under many aspects. Which go from the ability to avoid or overpass small obstacles, passing through the capability to achieve specific person tracking tasks, and arriving to the need of operating with a as-high-as-possible dynamic performance. As a matter of fact, such a wide variety of issues cannot be approached without a preliminary accurate analysis. This paper is aimed at fulfilling such task, by investigating the kinematics and dynamic properties of a novel over-actuated platform.