Navigating 3D steel web structures with an inchworm robot

Abstract

We wish to navigate across complicated three-dimensional structures. We describe a robot that can propel itself on a web of surfaces oriented around arbitrary directions in three-space. This robot is an inchworm-like robot with a simple, modular, and flexible design. We present control algorithms for the task-level skills that allow the robot to walk vertically, horizontally, and inverted, and the algorithms that allow the robot to make transitions between surfaces. Finally, we discuss our experiments.