VectorGlide: Realizing Continuum Drive Paradigm via Integrated Contact Kino-Dynamic MPC for Wheeled Quadruped Robots

This paper 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.