| Volume 25 Issue 12 - Publication Date: 1 December 2006 |
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| Scaling Hard Vertical Surfaces
with Compliant Microspine Arrays |
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| A.T. Asbeck, S. Kim,
M.R. Cutkosky School of Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford,
California 94305--2232, USA, W.R. Provancher Department of
Mechanical Engineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112-9208,
USA and M. Lanzetta University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy |
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| A new approach for climbing
hard vertical surfaces has been developed that allows a robot
to scale concrete, stucco, brick and masonry walls without using suction
or adhesives. The
approach is inspired by the mechanisms observed in some climbing insects
and spiders and
involves arrays of microspines that catch on surface asperities. The arrays
are located on the toes
of the robot and consist of a tuned, multi-link compliant suspension. The
fundamental issues of
spine allometric scaling versus surface roughness are discussed and the
interaction between
spines and surfaces is modeled. The toe suspension properties needed to
maximize the
probability that each spine will find a useable surface irregularity and
to distribute climbing loads
among many spines are detailed. The principles are demonstrated with a new
climbing robot,
SpinybotII, that can scale a wide range of flat exterior walls, carry a
payload equal to its own
weight, and cling without consuming power. The paper also reports how toe
parameters scale
with robot mass and how spines have also been used successfully on the larger
RiSE
robot. |
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| Multimedia Key |
= Video |
 = Data |
= Code |
= Image |
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Extension |
Type |
Description |
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1 |
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Example
1: A video of SpinybotII climbing various buildings around the
Stanford campus and some close shots of its feet and toes engaging
asperities. (41.0 MB) mpg |
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