Climbing up motion of the multi-locomotion robot (MLR) on vertical ladder with different gaits

Abstract

Ladders are one of the oldest and most common tools used by human to reach a higher point. This paper describes climbing up motions on vertical ladder for a multi-locomotion robot (MLR). As potential applications, the robot with ladder climbing is expected to go to humanly inaccessible areas, taking risks to conduct searching and rescue operations instead of human. Two kinds of climbing up gaits are proposed. The posture of torso is maintained using at least three limbs in a transverse gait. The robot moves up the two limbs on the same side together in a pace gait. As a result, the travelling speed in this pace gait is higher than that in the transverse gait. The control algorithm with body motion control and error recovery is experimentally verified using the MLR which has been developed to achieve various forms of locomotion including biped walking, quadruped walking and brachiation.