Abstract
Due to sliding force arising from the closed chain mechanism among the adhering points of a climbing caterpillar robot (CCR), a sliding phenomenon will happen at the adhering points, e.g., the vacuum pads or claws holding the surface. This sliding force makes the attachment of the climbing robot unsteady and reducesthe motion efficiency. According to the new bionic research on the soft-body structure of caterpillars, some flexible structures made of natural rubber bars are applied in CCRs correspondingly as an improvement to the old rigid mechanical design of the robotic structure. This paper firstly establishes the static model of the sliding forces, the distortion of flexible bars and the driving torques of joints. Then, a method to reduce the sliding force by exerting a compensating angle to an active joint of the CCR is presented. The analyses and experimental results indicate that the flexible structure and the compensating angle method can reduce the sliding forces remarkably.
Highlights
Because of their low‐cost and small and dexterous features,small climbing robots have good prospects in many fields such as anti‐terrorism, post‐disasterrescue, engineering tests, etc.As one kind of small climbing robot, bionic climbing robotshave attracted widespread attention because of their good terrain adaptability
Compared with the inchworm robot, the caterpillar climbing robot (CCR), which features at least seven units, closed chain climbing kinematicsand more adhering points, is more stable when climbing on complex surfaces[1][6][7]
Current research reveals that the application of a flexible structure in climbing robots can endow the robots with high adaptability to rugged environments, it can enhance the reliability of their climbing movement.The results both from the climbing robots and the bionic research domainsencourage us to embed some kinds of flexible structures into our modular climbing caterpillar robot (CCR) to cope with the sliding phenomenon
Summary
Because of their low‐cost and small and dexterous features,small climbing robots have good prospects in many fields such as anti‐terrorism, post‐disasterrescue, engineering tests, etc.As one kind of small climbing robot, bionic climbing robotshave attracted widespread attention because of their good terrain adaptability. Compared with the inchworm robot, the caterpillar climbing robot (CCR), which features at least seven units, closed chain climbing kinematicsand more adhering points, is more stable when climbing on complex surfaces[1][6][7]. Current research reveals that the application of a flexible structure in climbing robots can endow the robots with high adaptability to rugged environments, it can enhance the reliability of their climbing movement.The results both from the climbing robots and the bionic research domainsencourage us to embed some kinds of flexible structures into our modular CCR to cope with the sliding phenomenon.
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