Waalbot A Wheel/Leg robot for wall climbing. Goal: Develop a wall climbing robot capable of simple surface locomotion. Turning capabilities, plane to plane transitions, and payload capacity. Approach: The tri-leg Waalbot uses dry adhesion to stick to walls and ceilings as it climbs. The tri-leg design uses simple rotary actuators for a singly degree of freedom motion, but includes passive joints and elastic flexures to allow this motion to provide the preload and peeling forces necessary to climb using dry adhesion. A PIC microcontroller is used to control the motion of the robot and onboard power makes the system fully tetherless and wireless RF or IR control allows for teleoperation. Benefits: This design is simple, meaning it can be easily miniaturized and controlled. The legged motion allows the robot to overcome small obstacles and low angle surface curvatures. Even with this low complexity structure, unlike most other climbing robots, the robot is agile and fast with a small turning radius and plane transitions. Current Status: The current prototypes climb with synthetic dry adhesives and can climb on smooth and slightly rough surfaces such as wood and painted walls. It is controlled via wireless RF and powered by Lithium Polymer batteries. Videos: (newest to oldest) Project overview video at Engineering TV Climbing on wood cabinets with synthetic fiber footpads (May-08) h264 avi youtube Waalbot6 transitioning and turning climbing with fiber footpads (Mar-08) h264 avi youtube Remote controlled Waalbot5.5 on acrylic wall (Nov-07) Xvid avi youtube Waalbot6 on a wood door (Video for ICRA 2008) (Jan-08) Xvid avi Tri-Leg Waalbot climbing on acrylic, 2x speed (Oct-06) WMV youtube Tri-Leg Waalbot transitioning from floor to wall(Sept-05) avi. Waalbot climbing a vertical wall and turning. (Sept-05)AVI Prototype tri-leg Waalbot climbing. (early version) AVI. Members: Mike Murphy, Metin Sitti Former Members: Brad Borwn, Brian Rose, Mike Tanzini, Steve Huber, Will Tso, Will Wedler Other Wall Climbing Robots In the News: "The Works: Robotics" on the Histpry Channel to appear summer 2008 Engineering TV (June 2008) New Scientist blog on animal inspired robots with YouTube video Daily Planet, Discovery Channel Canada, March 27th 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] C. Menon, M. Murphy, M. Sitti, "Gecko Inspired Surface Climbing Robots" IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO), Shenyang, China, Aug 2004. M. Murphy, W. Tso, M. Tanzini, M. Sitti, "Waalbot: An Agile Semi-Autonomous Wall Climbing Robot" IROS 2006

[Waalbot6 with 50 micron diameter fibrillar adhesive footpads] [Waalbot6 climbing on a rough wooden cabinet video] [Waalbot5.5 prototype CAD model]