Review of snake robots in constrained environments

A New Compact Stair-Cleaning Robot

Stair Climbing is a key functionality desired for robots deployed in Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) scenarios. A novel compliant modular robot was proposed earlier to climb steep and big obstacles. This work extends the functionality of this robot to ascend and descend stairs of dimensions that are also typical of an urban setting. Stair Climbing is realized by equipping the robot's link joints with optimally designed passive spring pairs that resist clockwise and counter clockwise moments generated by the ground during the climbing motion. This 3-module robot is only propelled by wheel actuators. Desirable stair climbing configurations are estimated a-priori and used to obtain the optimal stiffness for springs. Extensive numerical simulation results over different stair configurations are shown. The numerical simulations are corroborated by experimentation using the prototype and its performance is tabulated for different types of surfaces.

Stair Climbing using a compliant modular robot

This paper presents a (patent-pending) small, quasi-static, minimal-complexity Stair Climbing Robot (SCR). The vehicle design is given simply by adding a third motor to a (Segway-like) Mobile Inverted Pendulum (MIP), enabling it to maneuver up stairs, leveraging feedback control, by planting it's “foot” onto the ground in front of the next step, lifting the chassis/wheel assembly up it's own “leg”, leaning over onto the top of the next step, self uprighting, and repeating for the following step(s). Fore/aft stabilization during leg balancing is given by using the MIP drive wheels as reaction wheels, while left/right stability is given by the width of the foot itself. The design is small and simple enough to potentially be ruggedized as a stair-climbing throwbot, akin to the Recon Scout (but able to climb up stairs) for reconnaissance in military and homeland security applications.

A minimalist Stair Climbing Robot (SCR) formed as a leg balancing & climbing Mobile Inverted Pendulum (MIP)

Mobile robots havebeendevelopedfor surveillance, operation ofLMA dependsontheoperator's emotional and reconnaissance andinspection aswellasforoperation in physical conditions, andtheyarenotalwaysideal. hazardous environments. Someareintended toexplore notonly Second, climbing stairs inthemanualmoderequires the natural terrains butalso artificial environments, including stairs.operator's knowledge, experiences, skills andtraining. The Thispaper explores algorithms toautonomously climb stairs. The algorithms werederived andimplemented foraspecific mobileproedures ofeclmbin st arecomosed of sevra robot withtheability totraverse suchobstacles bychanging its motions, which operators mustknowthoroughly. This is not tracks configuration. Furthermore, algorithms havebeen preferable siceoperators generally prefer less information to developed forconditions underwhichthemobile robot halts its usea product. Training on ascending stairs isalsonot motion during theclimbing process whenatrisk offlipping overpreferable, aspractices usually include failures. Intheworst orfalling down.Thetechnical problems related tothe case, LMA mightfall offthestairs, resulting inacritical implementation ofsomeofthese functions havebeenidentified damagetothesystem. andanalyzed, andtheir solutions validated andtested. The Finally, themanualmode isunsuitable forteleoperated algorithms and solutions werevalidated experimentally, climbing overablindfold suchasawall, fenceorhedge. An illustrating theeffectiveness ofautonomous climbing ofstairs. operator mustwatchLMAwhileclimbing stairs toconfirm therobot's motions. OnceLMA disappears fromthevisual Keywords-mobile robot, autonomous climbing, control field, itwouldbeoutofcontrol. Evenifitmight bepossible

Autonomous Stair Climbing withReconfigurable Tracked MobileRobot

In this paper, we describes a new design of a robot that is suitable for climbing up and down stairs. This design combines the advantage of using tracks and the robotic arm linkages to achieve robust climbing under the real-world conditions. Simulation models were initially used to develop the climbing sequences and later applied on a real prototype. System architecture of the robot is presented. All experimental and refinement of the climbing sequences was carried out using the prototype and the final product is an autonomous robot that is able to climb the stairs successfully.

Thanh Tung Le

Papers

STARCLY robot — A novel compact stair climbing robot