The innovation engine for new materials

Helene Levy

Helene Levy

University: 

University of California, Santa Barbara

Major: 

Mechanical Engineering

Site Abroad: 

Tokyo Institute of Technology

Mentor(s): 

Nozomu Miyata

Faculty Sponsor(s): 

Nobuyuki Iwatsuki

Faculty Sponsor's Department: 

Mechanical Engineering

Project Title: 

Linkage and Control System of Rickshaw Robot

Project Description: 

A pulled rickshaw is a human drawn carriage that seats one or two people. In this study, a biped robot was designed in place of the human to draw a cart with two passive wheels. The goal of this study was to create a natural gait and steering system using robot power. For the legs, two four-bar linkage systems were used a half cycle out of phase from each other. A parallelogram steering linkage was introduced on the cart to turn the rickshaw. A prototype of the design was tested for balance under conditions of straight walking and turning at a 40 degree wheel offset in both directions. Through this experimentation, the stability and feasibility of the robot rickshaw was analyzed.