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

Abstract

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.