Design and Development of a Versatile Quadruped Climbing Robot With Obstacle-Overcoming and Manipulation Capabilities

This article proposes a versatile quadruped climbing robot (QCR) based on multidegree-of-freedom legs utilizing adhesive vacuum suckers. For the first time, the climbing robot is simultaneously endowed with climbing, omnidirectional locomotion, large obstacle overcoming, and manipulation capabilitie...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE/ASME transactions on mechatronics 2023-06, Vol.28 (3), p.1-13
Main Authors: Li, Zhengyang, Li, Zhenjing, Tam, Lap Mou, Xu, Qingsong
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Barriers
Climbing
Climbing robots
Gait
High rise buildings
Inclination angle
Kinematics
legged locomotion
Locomotion
robot kinematics
robot manipulation
robot perception
Robots
Surface reactions
Torque sensors (robotics)
Visual tasks
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Summary:This article proposes a versatile quadruped climbing robot (QCR) based on multidegree-of-freedom legs utilizing adhesive vacuum suckers. For the first time, the climbing robot is simultaneously endowed with climbing, omnidirectional locomotion, large obstacle overcoming, and manipulation capabilities. A prototype QCR is developed by integrating the functional components along with vision and torque sensors. The kinematic and quasi-static climbing models have been derived under different scenarios with climbing safety checks by analyzing the adhesive and surface reaction forces. For potential application on the glass façade of high-rise buildings that are slippery and often full of prominent structures, a forward crawling gait and an omnidirectional climbing gait are planned to overcome the obstacles. A comprehensive torque controller is proposed for locomotion. The concept of the leg-transformed manipulator is introduced to accomplish the manipulation tasks under visual guidance. The robot's performance has been verified by performing several experiments in adhesion, crawling, visual-guided manipulation, and climbing. Results reveal that the developed QCR can stably climb, overcome obstacles, and perform manipulation on surfaces with different inclination angles and obstacles.
ISSN:1083-4435
1941-014X
DOI:10.1109/TMECH.2022.3221819