AnyClimb: a new wall-climbing robotic platform on various curvatures

Abstract

Climbing robots are being developed to clean, paint, or inspect high areas that are hard to reach for human beings. To widen their application area, robotic platforms have been suggested using bio-inspired attachment methods, such as dry and wet adhesion for smooth and rough surfaces. Generally, robots can climb either walls or poles, but there has been no single robotic platform that can climb both. We developed a new robotic platform to vertically climb a surface with various curvatures in the horizontal direction. Flat dry adhesive was used to make eight footpads. Walking locomotion of the footpads was achieved by a four-bar mechanism with a single motor. To adapt to curved walls, a compliant mechanism is suggested with an asymmetric four-bar mechanism. The kinematics and compliance design parameters were determined by analysis, and experiments were performed on walls with different curvatures. We plan to apply the platform to clean the surfaces of solar panels with different curvatures after modifying the design for commercialization.