Shady3D: A Robot that Climbs 3D Trusses

Abstract

This paper describes a truss climbing robot we designed and prototyped. The robot has a minimalist design with three motive degrees of freedom that enable movement along three-dimensional truss structures. This robot can form a six-degree-of-freedom structure by connecting to another identical module using a passive bar as a medium. We present the design and implementation of this robot, control algorithms for moving the robot in a 3D truss structure, and hardware experiments