Proposal of Omnidirectional Movable Positioning Plate Using T-Shaped Omni Wheels

In recent years, many positioning devices using electronic motors as a drive source have been developed. A typical example of a positioning device is the “XY stage” system, in which a nut attached to the stage moves with the rotation of a male screw. The problem with this method is that two motors, one on the X-axis and the other on the Y-axis, must be stacked to move in all directions, and the height of the device becomes high. To solve this problem, we propose a new method, the T-shaped configuration method. The omni wheels, which are arranged in a T shape, enable the plate to move in all directions without stacking the motors for the movement in X- and Y-axes. The proposed method is half the height of the conventional XY stage method. The principle of this mechanism is that it can move in all directions by adjusting the speed of each motor and synthesizing the speeds. In the experiments, it was verified whether the proposed T-positioning system can be used for positioning control with high accuracy under various conditions. The experimental results show that the object trajectory changed when the environment was changed, but converged to the target position, indicating that the method is suitable for various environments.