Design of Climbing Mechanism for a Tree Climbing Robot
ABSTRACT
The evolution in nature has led to the introduction of highly efficient biological mechanisms. Imitating these mechanisms offers enormous potentials for the improvement of our life and the tools we use. We have devised this mechanism inspired from the locomotion of a worm called Stomatapod which uses its whole body as distributed foot facilitating it to move on any terrain and have high agility on a regular tree environment. The gripper assembly designed uses a flexible casing which grasps the tree trunk of almost all diameter within the predefined range, basically it uses passive compliance. This mechanism can be used for climbing trees which are almost straight like coconut trees and poles. Hence this paper presents a new climbing mechanism for coconut tree climbing robot.
1. INTRODUCTION
Researchers all around the world work on climbing robots ([1], [2], [3]) most of these climbing robots are capable of climbing regular structures like poles, walls, domes etc. But a very few are capable of climbing trees, main reason being irregular surface and variation of diameter with length .It also requires greater agility and high maneuverability to be used as a product. Also the bark of some trees may not be strong enough to bear the weight of the climbing device, hence conventional climbing robots cannot be used for tree climbing applications. Many trees like coconut tree, arecanut tree, and palm trees are so tall that climbing them becomes risky. Hence harvesting fruits and nuts and maintaining them becomes difficult. So development of a unique tree climbing mechanism is necessary which may be used for maintaining and harvesting applications.
Most commonly used design for tree climbing is inch worm design ([4], [5]). These models are very slow. The main body of this type of robot is divided into two parts and each part has a gripper. These models using inch worm mechanism are continuous in their motion and can maneuver in complex tree environments involving
The evolution in nature has led to the introduction of highly efficient biological mechanisms. Imitating these mechanisms offers enormous potentials for the improvement of our life and the tools we use. We have devised this mechanism inspired from the locomotion of a worm called Stomatapod which uses its whole body as distributed foot facilitating it to move on any terrain and have high agility on a regular tree environment. The gripper assembly designed uses a flexible casing which grasps the tree trunk of almost all diameter within the predefined range, basically it uses passive compliance. This mechanism can be used for climbing trees which are almost straight like coconut trees and poles. Hence this paper presents a new climbing mechanism for coconut tree climbing robot.
1. INTRODUCTION
Researchers all around the world work on climbing robots ([1], [2], [3]) most of these climbing robots are capable of climbing regular structures like poles, walls, domes etc. But a very few are capable of climbing trees, main reason being irregular surface and variation of diameter with length .It also requires greater agility and high maneuverability to be used as a product. Also the bark of some trees may not be strong enough to bear the weight of the climbing device, hence conventional climbing robots cannot be used for tree climbing applications. Many trees like coconut tree, arecanut tree, and palm trees are so tall that climbing them becomes risky. Hence harvesting fruits and nuts and maintaining them becomes difficult. So development of a unique tree climbing mechanism is necessary which may be used for maintaining and harvesting applications.
Most commonly used design for tree climbing is inch worm design ([4], [5]). These models are very slow. The main body of this type of robot is divided into two parts and each part has a gripper. These models using inch worm mechanism are continuous in their motion and can maneuver in complex tree environments involving