Autonomous stair climbing

As the face of warfare changes, the military has started to explore the application of robotics on the battlefield. Robots give soldiers a flexible, technologically advanced, disposable set of eyes and ears to assist them with their goal. This thesis deals with the design and implementation of a system to allow a small highly mobile tactical robot to climb stairs autonomously. A subsumption architecture is used to coordinate and control the maneuver. Various approaches to the problem including evolved architectures and use of contraction analysis are explored. Code was written and tested for functionality with basic test software. The functionality of parts of the system and control architecture was tested on the robot in a simulated operational environment.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2003

Author dc:creator

• Narendran, Kailas, 1979-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Jamie Anderson and Leslie Kaelbling.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/29701

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/29701