Rotary Microspine Rough Surface Mobility

Abstract

JPL is developing a class of lightweight, highly mobile, crash-proof robots for reconnaissance and security applications.Arrays of independently compliant rotary microspines are used to build wheels that enable the robots to climb stairs, mount curbs, and climb rough vertical walls. This work presents many improvements to the rotary microspine wheels and several new configurations of the robotic platforms, including miniaturized robots weighing less than 10 grams. New microspine flexure materials are presented including viscoelastic flexures that dampen the impact of individual hook elements, and mass-manufacturable microspines made using a single cast process over steel wire in place of elastic flexures. Rapid iteration of microspine designs was done using shape deposition manufacturing and a single-wheeled test robot. This process allowed new wheel concepts to go from design to testing in just three days. In addition new configurations of robots with a powered wheel in the tail have improved reliability and demonstrated new capabilities like climbing heavily painted curbs, climbing stairs with overhanging face angles, and vertical climbing of concrete block buildings as tall as six stories. These results are presented below and in the accompanying video.

Planetary Surface Mobility and Exploration: A Review

“…Designed for Mars lava tubes and potentially other environments, it is composed of spaceflight-tolerant materials and has tested microspines [71,72] attached to the wheels, allowing it to climb steep inclines (47-49°depending on design). A similar robotic form factor based on the DROP robotic family [73] has shown the ability to climb vertical walls with the microspines as well. Unlike prior microspine systems, which use multiple materials, the main portion of each leg slice is constructed of laser cut high-impact acrylic in a cassette of nine stacked leg slices, rigid outer plates, and thin spacers separating each slice to allow independent movement.…”

Self-Compliant Track-Type Wall-Climbing Robot for Variable Curvature Facade

“…The most commonly used adhesion methods at present are by using magnets [1]- [14] or negative pressure [15]- [24]. Other new methods, such as dry adhesion [25]- [31], micro-spines [32]- [35], and electrostatic [36] and [37], have also been developed. Each adhesion method has different types of adhesion.…”

“…Dry adhesion has adhesive footpads [25] and [26], track [27][28][29], and wheel-leg-type [30] and [31]. Micro-spines feature wheel [32] and claw-types [33][34][35]. Electrostatic type mainly adopts the track-type [36] and [37] to ensure reliable contact with the wall.…”

Faster R-CNN-based Decision Making in a Novel Adaptive Dual-Mode Robotic Anchoring System

“…These include, for example, an omni-directional anchoring foot mechanism based on microspines, hierarchical arrays of claws with suspension flexures, that can tolerate forces as large as 100 N on natural rock surfaces [14]. In [15] an array of independently compliant rotary microspines on a wheel structure was developed that enables the robots to climb rough vertical walls [15]. The versatility of octopus suckers has also inspired the development of artificial counterparts of this natural organ.…”