International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD)

Volume 5 Issue 4, May-June 2021 Available Online: www.ijtsrd.com e-ISSN: 2456 – 6470

Design and Fabrication of Wheel

Chair using Rocker Bogie Mechanism
Arjun CP, Jithin Peter TK, C. Mohamed Meersa, Habeeb Rahman PP
B Tech Student, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Eranad Knowledge City Technical Campus, Malappuram, Kerala, India

ABSTRACT How to cite this paper: Arjun CP | Jithin

Rocker bogie finds a vital role in determining the scientific analysis of Peter TK | C. Mohamed Meersa | Habeeb
objectives separated by many distance apart. The mobility design at present is Rahman PP "Design and Fabrication of
quite a bit complex with many legs or wheels. The wheeled rover which is Wheel Chair using Rocker Bogie
capable of driving over the rough terrain provided with high degree of Mechanism"
mobility suspension system. The drive provided by the rocker bogie is simple Published in
and it mainly operated by the means of two motors. The motors are kept International Journal
inside in order to make it more reliable and efficient. In overcoming the bumps of Trend in Scientific
in the natural terrain the wheels are operated simultaneously. By Research and
implementing this mechanism the vehicle can come through any obstacles it Development (ijtsrd),
faces during the travel in the terrain. ISSN: 2456-6470, IJTSRD42537
Volume-5 | Issue-4,
KEYWORDS: wheel chair, Rocker bogie Mechanism June 2021, pp.1231-1234, URL:
www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd42537.pdf

Copyright © 2021 by author (s) and

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Research and Development Journal. This
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I. INTRODUCTION
In order to have his life on earth man must find a way to linkage mechanism ensured that the vehicle can pass over the
earn. As the time goes on we must remember of deprived step smoothly when the wheel contacts the step, changing the
people. We need to find a way to support such a individuals body configuration of the vehicle. No sensors and no
with deprived legs, hands or other parts of the body. They additional actuators are required to pass over the non-flat
were too dependent on others for everything, so we need to ground. Rajasekar P et al.(2013) proposed and fabricated a
understand their feelings and provide a way to carry out manually operated wheelchair that can travel on both plane
their life. It is difficult for them to migrate from one place to terrains and also in the staircases. This design primarily aims
other. The mobility of an individual is being restricted. The at providing stability to the person who travels in the wheel
small scale manufacturers were keen on their efforts to chair and with minimum manufacturing cost. Instead of using
develop the cycle that suits them but it is not in the case of normal wheels they have used penta wheel. The steel rod is
other transportation facilities. The tricycle invention penta shaped and each rod is equally inclined of 72° from
provided them with increased mobility and independence. each other. At the time of climbing, one wheel that is the idle
So we had an idea of inventing a wheel chair with rocker wheel will be in contact with the ground and the wheel will
bogie mechanism. It consists of motor, battery, links and be in contact with the stair.
wheels. The suspension design used in this mechanism offers
Nitin Yadav et al.(2015) discussed about the mechanical
vehicle stability. The rocker bogie suspension finds its first
design and its advantages of Rocker- bogie suspension
application in Mars Exploration Rover project.
system in order to find suitability to implement it in
1. MOTIVATION OF WORK conventional loading vehicles to enhance their efficiency and
Daisuke Chugo et al.(2006) developed a mechanical design of also to cut down the maintenance related expenses of
holomonic mobile vehicle that is capable of running over conventional suspension systems. They observed that that
irregular terrains. The performance of vehicle on rough the main problem associated with current suspension system
terrain was increased by using passive linkages in the design. installed in heavy loading vehicles is their slow speed of
The previous versions of passive linkages which were motion which derail the rythem to absorb the shocks
implemented in this design those where found to improper as generated by wheels. They proposed a design a design which
their body configuration cannot fit the terrain surface and aimed at increased at increasing the rocker-bogie mobility
wheels cannot transmit its traction force. Their prototype system in conventional heavy loading vehicle behavior when
mechanism consisted of seven special wheels with free high speed traversal is required.
rollers and a passive linkage mechanism. The passive

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 International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) @ www.ijtsrd.com eISSN: 2456-6470
Chinmaya Sukhwal et al. (2016) presented a design of to the rim of the wheel. These flexure joints act as shock
wheelchair for the people suffering from disabilities such as absorbers which help to reduce the shock loads on other
motor impairment. The proposed design mainly focuses on components of the rover. Each wheel also has small cleats,
enhancing the wheelchair with the low-level stair climbing which have been found to be effective both for soft sandy
feature. The measurements for the wheelchair are selected terrain and in navigating over rocks Curiosity an advantage
according to the standard anthropremetric measurements. in terms of its path lining ability. It has a three axis inertial
The proposed wheelchair has been particularly designed to measurement unit (IMU), enabling the rover to make precise
perform stair climbing operations as well as mobility through movements while also monitoring the degree of tilt that the
uneven terrain. The dimensions of the wheelchair seat has rover is experiencing. To tackler the mobility challenge, the
been taken with respect to standard measurements of an 900kg rover has a very similar 6 wheel rocker-bogie
adult human being as specified by ADA, whereas the suspension as previous mars exploration rovers have. The
dimensions of the frame and wheels are based on the larger size combined with the rocker-bogie suspension
assumption of conventional staircase at home environment. allows the rover to go over obstacles 60-75 cm higher, which
is greater than its wheel diameter of 50 cm. it can also safety,
S.F.Toha (2015) proposed an intelligent inclined motion
curiosity also has created treads that are similar to the MER
control of an amphibious vehicle while moving on uneven
rovers, which were found to be an optimal solution for
terrain surface. The trainability helps the vehicle reducing a
Martian terrain. With a top speed of 4cm/sec, it was the
flipping back and slippage while it on a mission since the
fastest rover sent to mars.
terrain surface after a disaster is unpredictable. Thus,
applying the controller algorithm will optimizing the vehicle In reviewing NASA’s rovers for surface exploration on mars,
ability to maneuver in any surface condition with minimum there were many similarities in both their mechanical design
risk. and software that enable the rovers to perform on-board
path planning. Autonomous planetary navigation combined
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
with hazard avoidance and other self-preservation
A. Recent Rovers And Their Missions
autonomy makes these rovers excellent platforms to reliably
Much of space exploration can be divided into three
transport and position their scientific instruments. The
categories: a quest to better understand our universe,
biggest changes between missions have been the size of the
interest, and economic potential in using natural resources
rover and the types of scientific instruments it supports.
outside our planet, and the future, colonization of extra-
Astrobotic technology inc is one such company that has
terrestrial bodies. Furthermore, most interest has been in
founded itself on making space exploration profitable, by
our moon and mars. As these planetary bodies are close by,
delivering payloads and performing robotic services on the
and have environments that are hospitable enough for
moon. They are currently in collaboration with Camegie
rovers, and potentially for future colorization. The moon is
Mellon University and others, to develop a rover and lander
also very well suited for scientific equipment such as radio
for their first surface lunar exploration mission, which it
observatories or IR telescopes as it has no atmosphere,
successful will satisfy the X-prize criteria as well as other
instruments such as these can measure signals that would
objectives. Their robot, called red rover, is reviewed here
otherwise be disturbed or eliminated on earth. Interest in
because it is one of the most developed lunar exploration
mars mostly relates to expanding our knowledge of the
rovers. Red rover is designed to be a scout, exploring places
planet, specifically with respect to its ability to support a
such as polar ice fields or skylights into lunar lava tubes. Its
human colony. Learning more about the composition of its
goal is to determine where the interesting locations are
atmosphere and soil can tell us whether mars could
based on its analysis of chemical composition and High
potentially support microbial life. Since 1976, NASA has been
resolution 3D IMAGES.
exploring the surface of mars with rovers, starting with the
dual landing of Viking 1 and Viking 2 Landers. In 1997, the The proposed paper produces a novel design in pursue of
mars pathfinder (mpf) Lander delivered the sojourner rover increasing the rocker-bogie mobility system in conventional
to the surface successfully. Most recently, in early 2004, heavy loading vehicle behavior when high-speed traversal is
NASA again landed two more rovers on mars, spirit and required. In future, if the system installed in heavy vehicles
opportunity. In November 2011, NASA has launched the and conventional off road vehicles, it will definitely
mars science laboratory (msl) with a rover named curiosity. decreases the complexity as well as power requirements to
Despite the multiple rovers that NASA has sent to mars, each retain bumping within it Future scopes of Rocker Bogie
mission has similar objectives. Mechanism are in military operations as a weapon carrier &
for locating coal deposits in coal mines. Along with
Making improvements from past mars rovers, NASA has
establishing a concept design, robust design parameters are
continued to develop autonomous navigation to make it
set to minimize performance variation. The Grey-based
easier and quicker to control their rovers, given the
Taguchi Method is adopted for providing an optimal setting
relatively large time delays in sending commands. To do this,
for the design parameters of the robot. The robot prototype
on-board stereo vision processing was used to develop an
is shown to have successfully scaled stairs of varying
image on the environment, which identified positive and
dimensions, with overhang, thus corroborating the analysis
negative obstacles relative to the ground plane. The other
performed. This work shows how rocker bogie system works
main features of MERs relate to mobility hardware, which
on different surfaces. As per the different weight acting on
allowed them to traverse the Martian terrain with relative
link determines torque applied on it. By assuming accurate
ease. In continuation of past mars rover design, the rocker-
stair dimensions, accurately dimensioned rocker bogie can
bogie suspension was used. It consists of six wheels and
climb the stair with great stability During stair climbing test
multiple axles that allow the rover to overcome obstacles
for length less than 375 mm (15 inch) system cannot climb
larger than its wheel diameter. The specialized wheels of the
the stair. It can be possible to develop new models of rocker
rover are approximately 26 centimeters in diameter and
bogie which can climb the stairs having low lengths.
have a unique aluminum flexure structure to connect the hub

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 International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) @ www.ijtsrd.com eISSN: 2456-6470
III. DESIGN OF ROCKERS BOGIE
The important factor in manufacturing of rocker bogie
mechanism is to determine the dimensions of rocker and
bogie linkages and angles between them. The lengths and
angles of this mechanism can be changed as per
requirement. The aim of this work is to manufacture the
rocker bogie mechanism which can overcome the obstacles
of 150 mm height (like stones, wooden blocks) and can climb
over stairs of height 150 mm. Also another target is to climb
any surface at an angle of 45˚. To achieve the above targets
we had designed the rocker-bogie model by assuming stair
height 150 mm and length 370 mm. Using Pythagoras
theorem, we found the dimensions of the model. It have both
angles of linkages are 90° and 120°. The objective of the
research work is stair climbing. To achieve proper stair
climbing the dimensions of linkages should be proper.
Assume the stair height and length 150 mm and 370 mm We have assumed that <BAC =90˚
respectively. To climb stairs with higher stability, it is
required that only one pair of wheel should be in rising AD is perpendicular bisector to BC
position at a time. Hence to find dimension of bogie linkages, From the calculation shown above in the figure BC = 38cm
first pair of wheels should be placed at horizontal position
means at the end of the rising and second pair should be In Δle BDA
placed just before the start of rising. There should be some Using Pythagoras Theorem
distance between vertical edge of stair and second pair of
wheel to striking of wheels. The determination of dimension AB2 = BD2 + AD2
of rocker and bogie linkages is the key factor in By Solving we get the value of AB as 30.6cm
manufacturing of rocker bogie mechanism. Based on the
requirements, the dimension can be varied. The main aim of The Link of the Back Wheel is inclined at about 120˚ From
this project is that it overcomes obstacles up to a certain the seat.
height and up to a certain angle. We assumed stair case of The angles 90˚ and 120˚ is assumed in order to provide the
certain height and length, and then by using the Pythagoras wheel chair with optimum conditions.
theorem, we came up with dimension of the chair. In order
to achieve a greater stability only one pair of wheel must be V. CONCLUSION
at the rising position. To find the dimension of the linkages This project makes it way over the rough terrain. The torque
we have to place the first pair of wheels horizontally, next developed will be based on the weight acting on the each of
pair is placed before rising. A suitable distance is maintained the links. By having accurate measurements of stair we could
between them. have a chair with much greater stability. When the chair’s
rear end faces the stair edge, the posture of the chair is poor.
It undergoes a smooth travelling while it travels in the
ascending fashion but while coming down it comes up with
vibration. So we planned to have a spring and braking
system. We put forward with mechanical design for the
passive linkages. When the vehicle is made contact with the
step the momentum is being calculated from which moment
force of the free joint is carried out. Atlast we cross checked
the values with the computer simulation software. Here the
mechanism is equipped with the minimal control system and
successfully tested by moving it over the stairs in the
forward and in the reverse direction.
VI. FUTURE SCOPE
In Future, if the system installed in heavy vechiles and
conventional heavy loading vechile and conventional off
road vechiles, it will definitely decrease the complicity as
Figure 1: Cad Drawing well as power requirement to retain bumping within it.
Future scope in rocker bogie mechanism are in military
IV. CALCULATIONS
application as weapon carrier and for locating coal deposts
Design calculation
in coal mines.
Stair Size: 34cm × 15cm
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