Title: Climbing up motion of the multi-locomotion robot (MLR) on vertical ladder with different gaits

Authors: Zhiguo Lu; Kosuke Sekiyama; Yasuhisa Hasegawa; Tadayoshi Aoyama; Hironari Yoneda; Toshio Fukuda

Addresses: Department of Micro-Nano Systems Engineering, Nagoya University, Furo-cho 1, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8603, Japan. ' Department of Micro-Nano Systems Engineering, Nagoya University, Furo-cho 1, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8603, Japan. ' Department of Intelligent Interaction Technologies, University of Tsukuba, Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba, 305-8573 Japan. ' Department of Micro-Nano System Engineering, Nagoya University, Furo-cho 1, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8603, Japan. ' Department of Micro-Nano System Engineering, Nagoya University, Furo-cho 1, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8603, Japan. ' Department of Micro-Nano System Engineering, Nagoya University, Furo-cho 1, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8603, Japan

Abstract: Ladders are one of the oldest and most common tools used by human to reach a higher point. This paper describes climbing up motions on vertical ladder for a multi-locomotion robot (MLR). As potential applications, the robot with ladder climbing is expected to go to humanly inaccessible areas, taking risks to conduct searching and rescue operations instead of human. Two kinds of climbing up gaits are proposed. The posture of torso is maintained using at least three limbs in a transverse gait. The robot moves up the two limbs on the same side together in a pace gait. As a result, the travelling speed in this pace gait is higher than that in the transverse gait. The control algorithm with body motion control and error recovery is experimentally verified using the MLR which has been developed to achieve various forms of locomotion including biped walking, quadruped walking and brachiation.

Keywords: climbing up; climbing motion; multi-locomotion robots; MLR; vertical ladders; robot gait; ladder climbing; climbing robots; body motion control; error recovery; robot motion; robot control; mobile robots.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMA.2011.045251

International Journal of Mechatronics and Automation, 2011 Vol.1 No.3/4, pp.190 - 200

Received: 04 Jul 2011
Accepted: 17 Oct 2011
Published online: 26 Mar 2015 *

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