A bio-inspired climbing robot: design, simulation, and experiments

摘要

The application of bio-inspired robots on various engineering problem has become a fascinating subject. In this field, locomotion pattern of various insects has already been implemented in a notable way. The purpose of this paper is to add the magnetic adhesion principle with a bio-inspired modular robot which mimics the motion of an inchworm. This paper confines the climbing environment in a flat plane and describes a suitable climbing gait for the robot. The robot is modelled as a 4-link planar mechanism with three revolute joints actuated by DC servo motors. A 3D model is prepared and simulated in multi-body dynamics solver to investigate the kinematic and dynamic behaviour of the system. The simulated results provide an idea about the selection of servo motor specifications required to build the prototype.