A palm for a rock climbing robot based on dense arrays of micro-spines
Shiquan Wang, Hao Jiang, Mark R. Cutkosky
Abstract
We present a new palm design that features a dense array of micro-spines for the JPL Robosimian human-scale climbing robot. A linearly-constrained spine mechanism is introduced and analyzed using adhesion and stiffness models. This mechanism achieves a spine density of 19/cm2 and a mean adhesion of 67N (207kPa) on coarse concrete surfaces. The models are validated on two different surfaces with two sets of experiments. A 120×100mm palm consisting of 12 spine tiles and a pulley differential system for load sharing are designed and tested on 9 different surfaces. The mean shear adhesion goes up to 710N (183kPa) on concrete blocks. Design considerations include scaling efficiency and maximal single-spine force. Desirable properties for load sharing in the palm design are discussed.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{iros2016_apalmforarockcli,
title = {A palm for a rock climbing robot based on dense arrays of micro-spines},
author = {Shiquan Wang and Hao Jiang and Mark R. Cutkosky},
booktitle = {IROS 2016},
year = {2016}
}