VectorGlide: Realizing Continuum Drive Paradigm via Integrated Contact Kino-Dynamic MPC for Wheeled Quadruped Robots
Zhihao Zhang, Fei Meng, Maosen Wang, Botao Liu, Zhicheng Yuan, Wenyun He, Xuechao Chen, Zhangguo Yu
Abstract
This letter addresses the inherent inefficiencies and limited agility of traditional gait-based locomotion by proposing the continuum drive paradigm as a high-performance alternative. Existing control frameworks are limited by their simplified predictive models and decoupled planners, which prevent them from utilizing coupled whole-body dynamics, managing system redundancy, and planning stance-wheel motion. To solve these issues, we propose a unified framework built upon our novel VectorGlide kinematic strategy. This strategy enables agile, hardware-free steering by leveraging coordinated whole-body posture adjustments to satisfy the commanded Instantaneous Center of Rotation (ICR) geometry. The practical realization of this strategy is achieved through the Integrated Contact Kino-Dynamic Model Predictive Control (ICKD-MPC), which formulates the entire motion generation task as a single Optimal Control Problem (OCP) solved in real-time. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our framework, achieving up to a 24× improvement in tracking precision and a 50-75% enhancement in energy efficiency (Cost of Transport) compared to traditional gait-based locomotion.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{ral2026_vectorglidereali,
title = {VectorGlide: Realizing Continuum Drive Paradigm via Integrated Contact Kino-Dynamic MPC for Wheeled Quadruped Robots},
author = {Zhihao Zhang and Fei Meng and Maosen Wang and Botao Liu and Zhicheng Yuan and Wenyun He and Xuechao Chen and Zhangguo Yu and Qiang Huang},
booktitle = {RA-L 2026},
year = {2026}
}