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A mobile robot with autonomous climbing and descending of stairs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2009

Pinhas Ben-Tzvi ,
Shingo Ito  and
Andrew A. Goldenberg
Pinhas Ben-Tzvi*
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Canada
Shingo Ito
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Canada
Andrew A. Goldenberg
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Canada
*
*Corresponding author. Email: pinhas.bentzvi@utoronto.ca
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Summary

Mobile robots are used to operate in urban environments, for surveillance, reconnaissance, and inspection, as well as for military operations and in hazardous environments. Some are intended for exploration of only natural terrains, but others also for artificial environments, including stairways. This paper presents a mobile robot design that achieves autonomous climbing and descending of stairs. The robot uses sensors and embedded intelligence to achieve the task. The robot is a reconfigurable tracked mobile robot that has the ability to traverse obstacles by changing its track configuration. Algorithms have been further developed for conditions under which the mobile robot would halt its motion during the climbing process when at risk of flipping over. Technical problems related to the implementation of some of the robot functional attributes are presented, and proposed solutions are validated and experimentally tested. The experiments illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach to autonomous climbing and descending of stairs.

Keywords

Mobile RobotsAutonomous SystemsControl of Robotic SystemsTeleoperationDesign of Mechatronic Systems
Type
Article
Information
Robotica , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , March 2009 , pp. 171 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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