Towards maneuverability in plane with a dynamic climbing platform

Abstract

Dynamic climbing robots have shown vertical speeds that approach those of the fastest climbing animals, but to date, no work has been conducted on directional control or maneuverability while climbing for these platforms. Directional control in animals during high-speed terrestrial running utilizes altered leg kinematics and leg specialization, however, little work has been done to classify biological strategies for maneuverability in the scansorial regime. To gain insight on how alterations of leg kinematics effect maneuverability during high-speed climbing, we propose three methods for directional control and implement them on a high-speed, dynamic climbing robotic platform. These methods alter the leg kinematics of the platform through asymmetrically changing the foot placement, center of mass, and leg length. We show that heading angles of up to 37 • off of vertical are possible while only decreasing the vertical ascension rate by 20%.1 J. Dickson is with The Boeing Company in Houston, TX 77058, USA 2 J. Patel is with the This paper has supplementary downloadable material available at http: //ieeexplore.ieee.org, provided by the authors. This includes one multimedia MP4 format movie clip which shows the operation of the presented platform. This material is 1.30 MB in size.

Running up a wall: the role and challenges of dynamic climbing in enhancing multi-modal legged systems

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AquaClimber: a limbed swimming and climbing robot based on reduced order models

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