A Novel Tracked Wall-Climbing Robot with Bio-inspired Spine Feet

This paper proposes a novel tracked wall-climbing robot with bio-inspired spine feet. The robot’s track is composed of a dozen spine feet, which are used to attach on rough surfaces. Compared with legged climbing robots, tracked climbing robots have more spines and the adhesion property could be improved, but their rotary movements make it difficult for spines to detach from surfaces. To address this problem, a mechanism with two circular guides is introduced in the robot design to imitate the foot attaching and detaching movements of insects. Driven by the mechanism, the spine foot begins to attach on the surfaces when it locates at the front of the robot, and detaches from the surface when it locates at the rear of the robot. Some climbing experiments have been conducted, and the robot is capable of climbing on sandpaper, brick, coarse stucco, and pebble walls.