Abstract—This study investigates the design and analysis of the transmission and drive system in a mini-vehicle equipped with a mini-surface weapon platform. This approach can be divided into two main subjects: In the first subject a 3D-CAD model of tracked mini-vehicle that is composed of chassis and mini-surface weapon platform, which is parallel manipulators (PMs), was successfully developed to operate over a wide range of rough terrain. The designed PMs has naturally three degrees-of-freedom (3-DOF), namely: two rotations between the base and the platform (on which we focus on in this paper), and one rotation between the base and the chassis of the mini-vehicle. The second subject concerns the inverse kinematics analysis of the PMs within consideration of changes in the base orientation during the movement of the mini-vehicle on rough terrain. The goal of the PMs inverse kinematics analysis is to maintain the platform in a stable position as well as the weapon directed toward a fixed target, while the mini-vehicle is moving on rough terrain. Furthermore, a Matlab implementation of the inverse kinematics model is implemented in order to solve the PMs stabilization problem.

Index Terms—Mini-vehicle, inverse kinematics analysis, parallel manipulators (PMs), rough terrain.

The authors are with the School of Mechatronical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, BJ 100081 China (e-mail: gouraya.farid@yahoo.fr, Lidongguang @bit.edu.cn).

Cite: Djoudi Farid and Li Dongguang, "Analysis and Design of Transmission and Drive System in Mini Surface Weapon Platform," International Journal of Applied Physics and Mathematics vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 296-303, 2014.