Design of a high-payload Mecanum-wheel ground vehicle (MWGV)

With the rapid developments of Industry 4.0 and Smart Manufacturing, customized manufacturing has been becoming greatly needed. Meanwhile, the challenge of production automation has become more bigger, especially for the automation of moving, picking, placing and manipulating objects. Many researchers have begun to work on Autonomous Ground Vehicles (AGVs). Most AGVs were utilized to carry middle or small objects, as the high-payload AGVs were rarely developed. This paper focused on the design of a High-Payload Mecanum-Wheel Ground Vehicle (MWGV), which was 1.7 m wide and 2.04 m long. The weight of the vehicle was 740 kg and it was able to carry the payload as its own weight (i.e. around 7,300 N). The safety factor of the structural strength was greater than 1.66 and the safety factor of the axial design was at least 6.24. The vehicle was designed to carry 150-kg weight with a reach of 1.375 m without falling. The design of Mecanum wheels provided great flexibility on movement with small rotational radius. Mathematical descriptions about how Mecanum wheels were controlled was also introduced in this paper. Furthermore, the mechatronics and software integrations were demonstrated. The final experimental results showed the developed MWGV was able to perform the desired movement properly.