Switchblade is the nimble treaded rover of the UCSD Coordinated Robotics Lab.  Switchblade can pop wheelies and overcome obstacles (lke stairs) nearly as high as it is long.  The key to its agility is the fact that it can “throw its weight around”, so to speak, by actuating a heavy boom (containing the vehicle’s batteries) in order to reposition favorably its center of mass, which it can do quite quickly.  Our current prototype was built in partnership with National Instruments, and is built around the NI sbRIO 9602, with the control design performed in Labview. They say a picture is worth a thousand words: a few photos and videos of Switchblade are thus given below. 

We are currently perfecting a more direct approach to climbing stairs with this nimble little rover; this new maneuver requires carefully designed feedback control, and will be demonstrated here in due course.  We are also looking at the payload capacity of a ruggedized version of this basic design with miniaturized electronics, and the utility of extensible boom arms to extend the vehicle’s reach as well as additional manipulator arms for IED disposal, etc.  If you are interested in this design, please contact us today!