Design of quadruped walking and climbing robot

Abstract

This paper describes an integrated approach for the design of a quadruped robot, called "MRWALLSPECT III (multifunctional robot for wall inspection version 3)", which walks in planes as well as climb walls with suction pads. Since the robot is expected to be able to move from wall to wall to plane including negotiating convex or concave corners, a comprehensive study is needed to develop the robot by performing intuitive and geometrical analysis, critical aspects of design such as joint ranges, design of ankles, and location of actuators are discussed. Environmental geometries are classified into several groups, and criteria for design are proposed for each case. The proposed criteria are applied to the actual design of MRWALLSPECT III designed to carry an ultrasonic NDT tool for inspection of the large surface of industrial utilities. By implementing the proposed idea on the robot its effectiveness is experimentally confirmed.