Miscellaneous

[Airicist]

Uploaded on Feb 16, 2009

A climbing robot that grasps the micro-texture of the surface using special feet and special motions. The development team includes U Penn, Stanford, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon and Boston Dynamics. The work was funded by DARPA.

[Airicist]

Development of a micro aerial vehicle type wall-climbing robot mechanism

Published on Mar 1, 2015

As civil structures become massive and high, the maintenance and inspection for the structures are getting important, however most of the conventional maintenance and inspection methods are labor-intensive. It has a problem of the large cost due to the staffing professionals, lack of professional manpower and high risk for hard to reach areas. To solve these problems, the needs of wall-climbing robots are emerged. Infrastructure-based wall-climbing robots have been studied for a long time to inspect and maintain an outer wall of building with high payload and safety. However, the infrastructure must be installed on the wall to use the robot and it can injure the exterior of the structure. Consequently, the architects don’t prefer the infrastructure-based wall-climbing robots. In case of the non-infra-based wall-climbing robot, it is researched to overcome the aforementioned problems and gaining attention recently. Most of the non-infra-based wall-climbing robots, they stick to the wall using adhesion mechanisms such as magnetics, vacuum system or adhesion materials instead of the infrastructure that installed on the wall, but most of the technologies are in the laboratory level since the payload, safety and maneuverability are not satisfactory. To overcome these problems, a MAV(Micro Aerial Vehicle) type wall-climbing robot is proposed in this work. The robot is designed to climb a wall and flying with four rotors and wheels. It can fly using the thrust forces generated by four rotors. Also, it can stick to the wall with the same thrust forces and then climb the wall with four wheels. The wall-climbing robot can stabilize its position even if it is suddenly detached from the wall by unexpected disturbances using the flying capability. It makes the maneuverability and safety of the robot improved. The forward dynamics and inverse dynamics of the robot are solved and the controllers are proposed. Also, it is simulated by MATLAB and WORKING MODEL 2D software and then it is verified through experiments with a prototype.

[Airicist]

Tree climbing robot

Published on May 19, 2015

[Airicist]

Stair climbing robot to aid mobility of elderly

Published on May 27, 2016

Stair climbing robot designed by HIT Robot Group in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

[Airicist]

Stair climbing robot | final

Published on May 28, 2016

A new design of robot named Titan-D was developed by a group of students in their new research course field. This robot was designed to climb the stairs and any obstacle in front of it. Thank you to all the team members Fahmi, Afifah, Ilyda and Aimi.

[Airicist]

Flippy: a soft autonomous climbing robot

Published on Aug 1, 2017

Flippy is a small flipping biped robot with a soft, flexible body and on-board power and control. By leveraging its body compliance, flipping gait, and corkscrew gripper, Flippy can autonomously climb up and down surfaces held at any angle relative to gravity and transition from one surface to another, with very simple sensing and control. For more details, see our IROS 2017 paper by Melinda Malley et al.

[Airicist]

Wall-climbing robot inspired by leech

Published on May 10, 2019

A team at Toyohashi University of Technology developed a robot inspired by land leeches, which are excellent climbers in nature. The team designed a new motion mechanism using tube structure of shower hose to mimic the advantageous properties of leeches, namely, lightweight, flexible and extensible.

[Airicist2]

A Climbing Robot with Long Extending and Bending Tape Measure Limb - EEWOC

Apr 15, 2024

EEWOC: Extended-reach Enhanced Wheeled Orb for Climbing

Our modern world is filled with many large vertical structures, including towers, factories, bridges, power stations, and ships. These vital pieces of infrastructure require regular inspections and maintenance to ensure safety, but can be dangerous for humans. Climbing robots can be deployed to help protect human inspectors from electrical, chemical, and fall hazards, and can help automate these tedious and labor-intensive tasks. Existing climbing robots generally use wheeled locomotion, which offers poor adaptability and cannot overcome small features, or legged movement, which are often slow and bulky due to their overly complex designs that mimic ground-based animals and manipulator arms.

EEWOC uses a unique locomotion scheme to climb complex steel structures with its magnetic grippers. Its lightweight and highly extendable tape spring limb can reach over 1.2m, allowing it to traverse gaps and obstacles much larger than other existing climbing robots. Its ability to bend allows it to reach around corners and over ledges, and it can transition between surfaces easily thanks to assistance from its wheels. The wheels also let it to drive more quickly and efficiently on the ground. These features make EEWOC well-suited for climbing the complex steel structures seen in real-world environments.

EEWOC fits within a 260mm diameter sphere and weighs only 2.1kg. It can travel at 0.24m/s (0.79 ft/s) or around 0.9 bodylengths/s, making it one of the fastest climbing robots. It can also lift 3.4kg with a payload-to-weight ratio of 1.62, also making it one of the strongest. Its long limb length helps simplify the process of identifying suitable grasping points and coordinating limbs, steps which cause other legged climbing robots to be very slow. EEWOC represents a minimalist morphology that reduces the actuators and structures necessary for climbing, using passive, compliant, and switchable mechanisms.

For more information, see our published works:
ASME-IDETC 2023: A Lightweight Mobile Robot for Climbing Steel Structures With An Extending and Bending_Tape Spring Limb
asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IDETC-CIE/proceedings-abstract/IDETC-CIE2023/87363/V008T08A084/1170807


ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics 2023: Extending and Bending Robotic Limbs Using Tape Springs for Mobility and Manipulation: Preliminary Investigations
asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/mechanismsrobotics/article-abstract/15/3/031009/1160176/Flexible-Long-Reach-Robotic-Limbs-Using-Tape

Contact:
Justin Quan ([email protected])
Dennis Hong ([email protected])