Climbot: A modular bio-inspired biped climbing robot

High-rise tasks in agriculture, forestry and building industry requires robots possessing climbing function. Motivated by these potential applications and inspired by the climbing motion of animals such as inchworms, we have developed a novel biped climbing robot - Climbot. Built with a modular approach, the robot consists of five 1-DoF joint modules connected in series and two special grippers mounted at the ends. With this configuration, Climbot is able not only to climb a variety of media, but also to grasp and manipulate objects, and hence is a “mobile” manipulator. In this paper, we first introduce the development of this novel robot, and then illustrate three climbing gaits based on the unique configuration of the robot. Experiments of climbing poles are carried out to verify the climbing functions and to demonstrate potential application of the proposed robot.

Authors

• Yisheng Guan
• Li Jiang
• Haifei Zhu
• Xuefeng Zhou
• Chuanwu Cai
• Wenqiang Wu
• Zhanchu Li
• Hong Zhang 0013
• Xianmin Zhang

Keywords

• Grippers
• Joints
• Climbing robots
• Service robots
• Gears
• Kinematics
• Climbing Robot
• Forestry
• Modular Approach
• Building Industry
• Inchworm
• Prototype
• 3D Space
• Control Mode
• Robotic System
• Path Planning
• Mode Of Communication
• Light Bulb
• Robot Motion
• Middle Segment
• Basic Module
• Symmetric Configuration
• Changes In Turn
• Host PC
• Communication Towers
• Modular robot
• Bio-inspired robot
• Climbing gait