THE EFFECT OF SPRAWL ANGLE AND WALL INCLINATION ON A BIPEDAL, DYNAMIC CLIMBING PLATFORM

Abstract

www.eng.fsu.edu/stride Animals have shown the ability to climb vertical surfaces with high speed and stability. Utilizing the underlying dynamics of these animals, robotic platforms have been developed that climb vertical surfaces with similar speed. It is hy-pothesized that the pre-incidence angle of the legs, commonly referred to as sprawl angle, for these robotic platforms can significantly affect vertical veloc-ities, efficiency, and stability as well as passively controlling body oscillations. To date, little empirical work has been conducted on the effect of sprawl an-gle and wall inclination on the performance of dynamic climbing platforms. This paper presents initial research utilizing a biologically inspired dynamical climbing platform to understand the effect of sprawl angle and wall inclination on dynamic climbing. Simulations have shown that a sprawl angle of 30 ◦ max-imizes vertical velocity overall, while experimental results show that a sprawl angle of approximately 10 ◦ maximizes vertical velocity, while in both increasing sprawl angle increases lateral velocities over all wall inclinations.