J4 ›› 2015, Vol. 12 ›› Issue (1): 17-28.doi: 10.1016/S1672-6529(14)60096-2
A Wheeled Wall-Climbing Robot with Bio-Inspired Spine Mechanisms
Yanwei Liu1,2, Shaoming Sun2, Xuan Wu1,2, Tao Mei2
- 1. Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instrumentation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
2. Institute of Advanced Manufacturing and Technology, Hefei Institute of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changzhou 213164, China
A Wheeled Wall-Climbing Robot with Bio-Inspired Spine Mechanisms
Yanwei Liu1,2, Shaoming Sun2, Xuan Wu1,2, Tao Mei2
- 1. Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instrumentation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
2. Institute of Advanced Manufacturing and Technology, Hefei Institute of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changzhou 213164, China
摘要：
This paper presents a wheeled wall-climbing robot with the ability to climb concrete, brick walls using circular arrays of miniature spines located around the wheel. The robot consists of two driving wheels and a flexible tail, just like letter “T”, so it is called Tbot. The simple and effective structure of Tbot enables it to be steerable and to transition from horizontal to vertical surfaces rapidly and stably. Inspired by the structure and mechanics of the tarsal chain in the Serica orientalis Motschulsky, a compliant spine mechanism was developed. With the bio-inspired compliant spine mechanism, the climbing performance of Tbot was improved. It could climb on 100? (10? past vertical) brick walls at a speed of 10 cm•s−1. A mechanical model is also presented to analyze the forces acting on spine during a climbing cycle as well as load share between multi-spines. The simu-lation and experiment results show that the mechanical model is suitable and useful in the optimum design of Tbot.