Mechanical Design of a Novel Biped Climbing and Walking Robot
The present paper deals with the mechanical design of a novel biped climbing and walking robot, which is provided of a 2 (3-RPS) leg mechanism with 6 d.o.f.s. and which makes use of suction-cups for climbing on flat and rigid vertical surfaces. The serial
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1 Introduction In the last years, the mechatronic design of a low-cost biped robot was carried out in Cassino and several prototypes of the EP-WAR (Electro-Pneumatic-Walking-Robot) were designed, built and tested since 1995, as reported in (Figliolini and Ceccarelli, 1997; 1999; 2004). In particular, the last prototype, named EP-WAR3, was provided of a binary pneumatic actuation in order to be controlled in on/off environment by a PLC (Programmable-Logic-Controller) and good performances were obtained to walk along a straight line, turn right and left, climb and descend stairs. The equilibrium of the EP-WAR prototypes was obtained by means of two suction-cups, which were installed on the underside of each foot. Later, the attention was focused on the gait analysis and mechanical design of six-legged walking robots, as shown in (Figliolini and Rea, 2007; Figliolini et al., 2009). Currently, the mechatronic design of a novel biped climbing and walking robot is in progress at the University of Cassino. Several prototypes of walking and climbing robots were designed, built and tested around the world, but only some of these have inspired the current research project. In fact, the most significant and pertinent prototypes are described in (Nishi, 1992; Hirose and Kawabe, 1998; Bahr et al., 1996; Minor and Mukherjee, 2003; Balaguer et al., 2005). In particular, referring to (Nishi, 1992; Hirose and Kawabe, 1998), a biped robot capable of moving on wall surfaces with irregular shapes and the quadruped robot NINJA, were developed in Japan at the Miyazaki University and Tokyo Institute of Technology, respectively. Similarly, a quadruped climbing robot for the aircraft maintenance, named ROSTAM, was developed at Wichita State University (U.S.A.), before to design a new light-weight biped robot, as reported in (Bahr et al., 1996). Two biped designs for miniature climbing robots were proposed in (Minor
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G. Figliolini, P. Rea and M. Conte
and Mukherjee, 2003), as based on under-actuated kinematic structures. Finally, an interesting overview on the main features of non-conventional climbing robots mobility on complex 3D environments is reported in (Balaguer et al., 2005). Therefore, at moment, our attention has been focused on the overall mechanical design of a novel biped climbing and walking robot, which is provided of a 2 (3-RPS) leg mechanism with 6 d.o.f.s. and which makes use of suction-cups for climbing on flat and rigid vertical surfaces. The type and dimensional synthesis of the serial-parallel kinematic structure of each leg mechanism, along with the climbing and walking motion analysis, are presented in this paper by referring to (Kim and Tsai, 2003; Mattiazzo et al., 2005; Lukanin, 2005; Di Gregorio and Parenti-Castelli, 2006) and as first step of the current research project.
2 The 2 (3-RPS) Leg Mechanism The idea of the proposed 2 (3-RPS) leg mechanism comes from the design specifications, which are aimed to obtain wide workspace and good mobility, high rotation and stiffness, along with a good integration
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