SpinyHand: Contact Load Sharing for a Human-Scale Climbing Robot

Abstract

We present a hand specialized for climbing unstructured rocky surfaces. Articulated fingers achieve grasps commonly used by human climbers. The gripping surfaces are equipped with dense arrays of spines that engage with asperities on hard rough materials. A load-sharing transmission system divides the shear contact force among spine tiles on each phalanx to prevent premature spine slippage or grasp failure. Taking advantage of the hand’s kinematic and load-sharing properties, the wrench space of achievable forces and moments can be computed rapidly. Bench-top tests show agreement with the model, with average wrench space errors of 10–15%, despite the stochastic nature of spine/surface interaction. The model provides design guidelines and control strategy insights for the SpinyHand and can inform future work.