Wheel-legged robots combine the advantages of both wheeled robots and legged robots, offering versatile locomotion capabilities with excellent stability on challenging terrains and high efficiency on flat surfaces. However, existing wheel-legged robots typically have limited hip joint mobility compared to humans, while hip joint plays a crucial role in locomotion. In this paper, we introduce Whleaper, a novel 10-degree-of-freedom (DOF) bipedal wheeled robot, with 3 DOFs at the hip of each leg. Its humanoid joint design enables adaptable motion in complex scenarios, ensuring stability and flexibility. This paper introduces the details of Whleaper, with a focus on innovative mechanical design, control algorithms and system implementation. Firstly, stability stems from the increased DOFs at the hip, which expand the range of possible postures and improve the robot's foot-ground contact. Secondly, the extra DOFs also augment its mobility. During walking or sliding, more complex movements can be adopted to execute obstacle avoidance tasks. Thirdly, we utilize two control algorithms to implement multimodal motion for walking and sliding. By controlling specific DOFs of the robot, we conducted a series of simulations and practical experiments, demonstrating that a high-DOF hip joint design can effectively enhance the stability and flexibility of wheel-legged robots. Whleaper shows its capability to perform actions such as squatting, obstacle avoidance sliding, and rapid turning in real-world scenarios.

Wang Gongxian, vice director of the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University introduced that the robot arm with the operating forceps can freely rotate 540 degrees, which is more flexible than human arms. Wang added that the trauma caused in operations performed by surgical robots can be smaller and the treatment can be more precise compared with traditional operations. Robot arms were designed according to the functions of human hands. They will not tremble even if a doctor's hands shake, said Ou Yongsheng, a researcher at Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology under Chinese Academy of Sciences. In addition, the robots will immediately stop working in case of an emergency, such as instable voltage or power failure, Wang noted.