Design and Development of a Variable Configuration Delivery Robot Platform

In this paper, we introduce a variable configuration delivery robot platform named HuboQ. HuboQ is a wheeled mobile platform with 6-DOF manipulator and is the next version of KDMR-1, our previous robot platform. The design of mechanical and electrical systems and the development of overall system are described to illustrate how HuboQ is structured and improved. The variable configuration can overcome the disadvantages of using only one configuration. There are three variable configurations at HuboQ, four-wheel ZMP control configuration, two-wheel self-balancing configuration and two-wheel human-riding configuration. HuboQ can be used as an autonomous delivery robot and also as a human transporter. Experiments have demonstrated dynamic driving performances of the ZMP control and of two-wheel balancing control.