A Gecko-Inspired Robot Employs Scaling Footpads to Facilitate Stable Attachment

摘要

This paper presents the design of a legged robot with different scale of footpad that can climb with full balanced weight and on vertical surface. The adhesion performance, footpad scaling and body dynamics are explored and discussed in this paper. Results show that the robot chose a more crawling gait can maintain stability when climb with full balanced weight. Wall climbing experiments show that a gecko-inspired design principle of footpad can obtain a reliable climbing performance. The robot with different size of footpads also provides a good platform to better understand the scaling and biomechanics of surface attachment in climbing robot.