Pacific Lamprey Inspired Climbing
Brian Van Stratum, Kourosh Shoele, Jonathan E. Clark

TL;DR
This paper introduces a novel lamprey-inspired climbing robot and gait that enables dynamic vertical climbing and steering on flat surfaces, supported by a reduced-order model and experimental validation.
Contribution
The work presents a new bio-inspired climbing gait and robot design, demonstrating effective vertical and lateral climbing capabilities with improved stride length over natural lampreys.
Findings
Robot achieves 4.1 cm vertical stride per step.
Climbing speed reaches 4.8 cm/s at 1.3 Hz actuation.
Robot's stride length exceeds that of natural Pacific Lamprey by 14%.
Abstract
Snakes and their bio-inspired robot counterparts have demonstrated locomotion on a wide range of terrains. However, dynamic vertical climbing is one locomotion strategy that has received little attention in the existing snake robotics literature. We demonstrate a new scansorial gait and robot inspired by the locomotion of the Pacific Lamprey. This new gait allows a robot to steer while climbing on flat, near-vertical surfaces. A reduced-order model is developed and used to explore the relationship between body actuation and vertical and lateral motions of the robot. Trident, the new wall climbing lamprey-inspired robot, demonstrates dynamic climbing on flat vertical surfaces with a peak net vertical stride displacement of 4.1 cm per step. Actuating at 1.3 Hz, Trident attains a vertical climbing speed of 4.8 cm/s (0.09 Bl/s) at specific resistance of 8.3. Trident can also traverse…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSoft Robotics and Applications · Modular Robots and Swarm Intelligence · Robotic Locomotion and Control
