Capuchin: A Free-Climbing Robot Invited Paper

This paper describes an integrated quasi- autonomous four-limbed robot, named Capuchin, which is equipped with appropriate sensing, planning and control capabilities to "free-climb" vertical terrain. Unlike aid climbing that takes advantage of special tools and/or engineered terrain features, free climbing only relies on friction at the contacts between the climber and the rigid terrain. While moving, Capuchin adjusts its body posture (hence, the position of its centre of mass) and exerts appropriate forces at the contacts in order to remain in equilibrium. Vision is used to achieve precise contacts and force sensing to control contact forces. The robot's planner is based on a pre-existing two-stage "stance- before-motion" approach. Its controller applies a novel "lazy" force control strategy that performs force adjustments only when these are needed. Experiments demonstrate that Capuchin can reliably climb vertical terrain with irregular features.

[1]  Takeo Kanade,et al.  Control system of the self-mobile space manipulator , 1994, IEEE Trans. Control. Syst. Technol..

[2]  Fr.-W. Bach,et al.  Underwater climbing robot for contact arc metal drilling and cutting , 1996, Proceedings of the 1996 IEEE IECON. 22nd International Conference on Industrial Electronics, Control, and Instrumentation.

[3]  J. Salisbury,et al.  Active stiffness control of a manipulator in cartesian coordinates , 1980, 1980 19th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control including the Symposium on Adaptive Processes.

[4]  David Hsu,et al.  Randomized single-query motion planning in expansive spaces , 2000 .

[5]  Vijay Kumar,et al.  Robotic grasping and contact: a review , 2000, Proceedings 2000 ICRA. Millennium Conference. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Symposia Proceedings (Cat. No.00CH37065).

[6]  Stewart Sherrit,et al.  Lemur IIb: a robotic system for steep terrain access , 2006, Ind. Robot.

[7]  Yoshihiko Nakamura.  Minimizing Object Strain Energy for Coordination of Multiple Robotic Mechanisms , 1988, 1988 American Control Conference.

[8]  Timothy Bretl,et al.  Free-Climbing with a Multi-Use Robot , 2006, ISER.

[9]  Benjamin C. K. Tee,et al.  Skin-like pressure and strain sensors based on transparent elastic films of carbon nanotubes. , 2011, Nature nanotechnology.

[10]  Werner Neubauer.  A spider-like robot that climbs vertically in ducts or pipes , 1994, Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS'94).

[11]  Mark R. Cutkosky,et al.  Whole body adhesion: hierarchical, directional and distributed control of adhesive forces for a climbing robot , 2007, Proceedings 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[12]  Jeffrey J. Biesiadecki,et al.  Athlete: A cargo handling and manipulation robot for the moon , 2007, J. Field Robotics.

[13]  Kevin Blankespoor,et al.  BigDog, the Rough-Terrain Quadruped Robot , 2008 .

[14]  Koichi Hashimoto,et al.  A review on vision-based control of robot manipulators , 2003, Adv. Robotics.

[15]  Timothy Bretl,et al.  Climbing Robots in Natural Terrain , 2003 .

[16]  Peter I. Corke,et al.  A tutorial on visual servo control , 1996, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[17]  Masayuki Inaba,et al.  Motion Planning for Humanoid Robots , 2003, ISRR.

[18]  Oussama Khatib,et al.  Synthesis of Whole-Body Behaviors through Hierarchical Control of Behavioral Primitives , 2005, Int. J. Humanoid Robotics.

[19]  S. Shankar Sastry,et al.  On motion planning for dextrous manipulation, part I: the problem formulation , 1989 .

[20]  Simeon P. Patarinski,et al.  Robot force control: A review , 1993 .

[21]  Daniel E. Whitney,et al.  Force Feedback Control of Manipulator Fine Motions , 1977 .

[22]  Stephen Paul Linder,et al.  Robotic Rock Climbing using Computer Vision and Force Feedback , 2005, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[23]  Mark R. Cutkosky,et al.  Scaling Hard Vertical Surfaces with Compliant Microspine Arrays , 2006, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[24]  Stephen M. Rock,et al.  Control of a climbing robot using real-time convex optimization , 2006 .

[25]  Shane Farritor,et al.  Action module planning and its application to an experimental climbing robot , 2000, Proceedings 2000 ICRA. Millennium Conference. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Symposia Proceedings (Cat. No.00CH37065).

[26]  Ian D. Walker,et al.  A new approach to force distribution and planning for multifingered grasps of solid objects , 1991, Proceedings. 1991 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[27]  Toru Omata,et al.  Fast dextrous re-grasping with optimal contact forces and contact sensor-based impedance control , 2001, Proceedings 2001 ICRA. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.01CH37164).

[28]  Chih-Han Yu,et al.  Quadruped robot obstacle negotiation via reinforcement learning , 2006, Proceedings 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2006. ICRA 2006..

[29]  Friedrich Pfeiffer,et al.  Control of an Eight Legged Pipe Crawling Robot , 1997, ISER.

[30]  John J. Craig,et al.  Hybrid position/force control of manipulators , 1981 .

[31]  Steven Dubowsky,et al.  A Simplified Cartesian-Computed Torque Controller for Highly Geared Systems and Its Application to an Experimental Climbing Robot , 2000 .

[32]  Timothy Bretl,et al.  Learning-Assisted Multi-Step Planning , 2005, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[33]  Hisanori Amano.  A vertically moving robot able to grip handrails for fire-fighting , 2002, Adv. Robotics.

[34]  Eiichi Yoshida,et al.  Planning foot placements for a humanoid robot: A problem of inverse kinematics , 2011, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[35]  Jean-Claude Latombe,et al.  Multi-modal Motion Planning in Non-expansive Spaces , 2010, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[36]  T. Takenaka,et al.  The development of Honda humanoid robot , 1998, Proceedings. 1998 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.98CH36146).

[37]  Timothy Bretl,et al.  Motion Planning of Multi-Limbed Robots Subject to Equilibrium Constraints: The Free-Climbing Robot Problem , 2006, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[38]  Friedrich Pfeiffer,et al.  "MORITZ" a pipe crawler for tube junctions , 2003, 2003 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.03CH37422).

[39]  Hyung Seok Kim,et al.  Design of quadruped walking and climbing robot , 2003, Proceedings 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2003) (Cat. No.03CH37453).

[40]  José Manuel Pastor,et al.  ROMA: a climbing robot for inspection operations , 1999, Proceedings 1999 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.99CH36288C).

[41]  Jean-Claude Latombe,et al.  Motion planning for legged and humanoid robots , 2008 .

[42]  Matthew T. Mason,et al.  Compliance and Force Control for Computer Controlled Manipulators , 1981, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.

[43]  John Kenneth Salisbury,et al.  Using Near-Field Stereo Vision for Robotic Grasping in Cluttered Environments , 2010, ISER.

[44]  Ashutosh Saxena,et al.  Robotic Grasping of Novel Objects using Vision , 2008, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[45]  Timothy Bretl,et al.  Motion planning for a three-limbed climbing robot in vertical natural terrain , 2003, 2003 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.03CH37422).

[46]  Lydia E. Kavraki,et al.  Probabilistic roadmaps for path planning in high-dimensional configuration spaces , 1996, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[47]  Timothy Bretl,et al.  Motion Planning for Legged Robots on Varied Terrain , 2008, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[48]  Jean-Claude Latombe,et al.  A Single-Query Bi-Directional Probabilistic Roadmap Planner with Lazy Collision Checking , 2001, ISRR.

[49]  S. Hirose,et al.  Machine that can walk and climb on floors, walls and ceilings , 1991, Fifth International Conference on Advanced Robotics 'Robots in Unstructured Environments.