Wall Climbing Robbots Safeguarding and Enabling Space Exploration with ultra-mobile gecko inspired robots Goal: Develop teams of wall climbing robots that incorporate the unique locomotion modes and efficiencies enabled by dry adhesion in combination with robotic autonomy, and scientific functionality. Approach: Integrating synthetic dry adhesives into small ligthweight robots for efficient passive attachment. Four wall climbing robot designs are being studied. Tri-Leg Waalbot - a Wheel/leg robot Tank Design - a tracked wall climber Flexible Gecko Design - an SMA actuated flexible robot which mimics the gecko's movements to climb Geckobot - a motor actuated gecko inspired robot Wormbot - a modular inchworm inspired robot Benefits: Wall climbing robots can perform inspection, observation, repair, and act as communications relays. Their small size allows them to enter areas that are inaccessible to humans. The passive dry adhesive requires no power to remain stationary. Videos: Video 1: Waalbot6 transitioning and turning climbing with fiber footpads (Mar '08) h264 avi Video 2: Remote controlled Waalbot5.5 on acrylic wall (Nov-07) Xvid avi Video 3: Tri-Leg Waalbot climbing on acrylic, 2x speed (Oct-06) WMV Video 4: 3D animation model of Gecko climbing motion. Members: Mike Murphy, Ozgur Unver, Yigit Menguc, Metin Sitti In the News: "The Works: Robotics" on the Histpry Channel to appear summer 2008 Engineering TV episode (June 2008) New Scientist blog on animal inspired robots with YouTube video Daily Planet, Discovery Channel Canada, 5 minute segment on Waalbot. (Mar. 27, 2008) Bio-Inspired Robotics review article in Science (Nov. 2007) Technology Review Article (May 2007) Papers: B. Aksak, M. Murphy, M. Sitti, "Gecko Inspired Micro-Fibrillar Adhesives for Wall Climbing Robots on Micro/Nanoscale Rough Surfaces," ICRA, Pasadena, CA, May 2008. [pdf] M. Murphy, M. Sitti, "Waalbot: An Agile Small-Scale Wall Climbing Robot Utilizing Dry Elastomer Adhesives", IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, vol.12, no. 3, June 2007 [available online] O. Unver, A. Uneri, A. Aydemir, M. Sitti, "Geckobot: A Gecko Inspired Climbing Robot Using Elastomer Adhesives" IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Orlando, Florida May 2006. pdf O. Unver, M. Murphy, M. Sitti, "Geckobot and Waalbot: Small-Scale Wall Climbing Robots" AIAA 5th Aviation, Technology, Integration, and Operations Conference (ATIO) , Arlington, Virginia Sept. 2005. pdf C. Menon, M. Murphy, M. Sitti, "Gecko Inspired Surface Climbing Robots" IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO), Shenyang, China, Aug 2004. pdf C.Menon, M.Murphy , G.Shah , M. Sitti, F.Angrilli,"WaalBots for Space Applications" 55th IAC Conference , Vancouver, 2004 pdf

[Artist conception] [Waalbot CAD model] [Geckobot prototype] [Tank prototype]