Apr. 17 (Friday) Amir Degani (Carnegie Mellon University)
A Minimalist Dynamic Climbing Robot: Modeling, Analyses and Experiments
Abstract:
Most of today's climbing robots climb in a slow, quasi-static fashion, which usually requires many motors and a complicated gait control. I will propose a simple, novel, 2-link mechanism that climbs dynamically between two parallel walls. By using dynamic motion, the mechanism is able to climb robustly in an open loop. Moreover, this is done by using a single motor which is periodically excited. Analyses show that this nonlinear system exhibits period-doubling bifurcations that lead to chaos. I will present parts of this ongoing research, including modeling of the mechanism, numerical stability analysis and initial experiments.