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.