Development and Locomotion Control of a Horizontal Ledge-Climbing Robot

Ledge-like design is the most common architectural element for the outer walls of the buildings in intensive population. However, how to overcome these obstacles and continue climbing tasks is also one of the greatest design issues for conventional climbing robots. Instead of treating these ledges as obstacles, this study proposes an innovative climbing robot which mimics the unique locomotion styles of the human climbers via the ingenuous usage of the ledges on the wall. A central pattern generator based locomotion controller with five oscillators is adopted to provide desired robot joint commands for horizontal ledge climbing. An optimization procedure is applied to obtain the values relevant to phase coupling parameters because even a small mismatch of synchronization of robot joint motion may seriously affect the success of succeeding climbing process. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed climbing robot is able to perform a continuous ledge climbing task without falling on the ground.