CLIO: a Novel Robotic Solution for Exploration and Rescue Missions in Hostile Mountain Environments

TL;DR

This paper introduces CLIO, a rope-assisted climbing robot designed for exploration and rescue in steep mountain terrains, combining innovative actuation and control strategies for efficient, safe, and heavy payload-capable navigation.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel rope-aided climbing robot with a two-fold actuation system and an optimal control strategy, enabling vertical climbing and obstacle negotiation in mountain environments.

Findings

Validated in Gazebo simulations with <5% error on a 16 m jump.

Achieved fast trajectory computation (<1 s).

Demonstrated effective climbing and payload capacity.

Abstract

Rescue missions in mountain environments are hardly achievable by standard legged robots-because of the high slopes-or by flying robots-because of limited payload capacity. We present a concept for a rope-aided climbing robot which can negotiate up-to-vertical slopes and carry heavy payloads. The robot is attached to the mountain through a rope, and it is equipped with a leg to push against the mountain and initiate jumping maneuvers. Between jumps, a hoist is used to wind/unwind the rope to move vertically and affect the lateral motion. This simple (yet effective) two-fold actuation allows the system to achieve high safety and energy efficiency. Indeed, the rope prevents the robot from falling while compensating for most of its weight, drastically reducing the effort required by the leg actuator. We also present an optimal control strategy to generate point-to-point trajectories overcoming an obstacle. We achieve fast computation time (<1 s) thanks to the use of a custom simplified robot model. We validated the generated optimal movements in Gazebo simulations with a complete robot model with a < 5% error on a 16 m long jump, showing the effectiveness of the proposed approach, and confirming the interest of our concept. Finally, we performed a reachability analysis showing that the region of achievable targets is strongly affected by the friction properties of the foot-wall contact.