A Collaborative Flipping Continuum Wall-Climbing Robot with Integrated Drive and Function

Abstract

Although the mobility of climbing robots has made significant progress, especially the flipping climbing robots which possess strong adaptability to unstructured environments, their movement in complex unstructured constrained environments remains a challenge. This work proposes a flipping continuous wall-climbing robot, which maintains the capabilities of wall climbing, turning, obstacle overcoming, and transitioning between different planes. It can continuously move across unstructured wall surfaces, traverse narrow gaps, and crawl on walls in constrained spaces. The robot is composed of a trunk formed by three segments of continuous joint groups and magnetic adhesion modules at both ends, utilizing an untethered design. We conducted an analysis of the robot’s kinematic model and workspace. Experimental results demonstrate that the robot is equipped with multiple basic locomotion abilities, allowing it to execute 360° transitions between surfaces, navigate through apertures measuring 15 cm in diameter (0.37 body length), and move along the side walls of confined spaces that are 11 cm wide (0.27 body length). Additionally, the robot is capable of variable-radius flipping locomotion, supporting an effective payload of 520 g on the wall surface, and facilitating coordinated movement among multiple robots.