ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Robot. AI
Sec. Robot Design
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frobt.2025.1686519
Reinventing the Wheel: A Simulation-Aided Design of a Soft, Shape-Adapting, Lugged Wheel for Locomotion on Sandy Terrains
Provisionally accepted
- Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands
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Locomotion over granular terrain poses significant challenges for autonomous robotic systems, particularly in coastal regions characterized by loose, shifting sands. To optimize the locomotion on these challenging terrains, a simulation-aided design approach was used to develop a soft, shape-adapting, wheeled locomotion system. A co-simulation framework combining the discrete element method (DEM) and multibody dynamics (MBD) is employed to simulate the locomotion of a wheeled robot on varying sandy soils, covering both dry and wet sandy soil conditions. A shape-adapting wheel design is proposed, incorporating soft, inflatable elements that enable the wheel to transform between lugged and circular configurations. A discretized flexbody approach is adopted to model the interactions between the sandy soil and the soft, flexible bodies of the shape-adapting wheel design. Simulation results demonstrate improved performance of the shape-adapting wheels across a variety of sandy terrains, including slopes and obstacles. Integrating softness into the wheel improves obstacle climbing performance, while a lugged wheel configuration performs particularly well on loose, dry sandy slopes. This DEM-MBD co-simulation further enables efficient evaluation of locomotion strategies without the need for extensive physical prototyping.
Keywords: DEM, MBD, shape-adapting wheel, Granular terrain, Locomotion, simulation-aided design
Received: 15 Aug 2025; Accepted: 15 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Shi, Klaassen, Schott and Jovanova. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Hao Shi, h.shi-3@tudelft.nl
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