Modular robots for making and climbing 3-D trusses

A truss climbing robot has been extensively investigated because of its wide range of promising applications such as construction and inspection of truss structures. It is designed to have degrees of freedom to move in three-dimensional truss structures. Although many degrees of freedom allow the robot to reach various position and orientation, it causes complexity of design and control. In this thesis, the concept of modular robots is suggested as a solution to reconcile a trade-off between the functionality and the simplicity of a truss climbing robot. A single module has fewer degrees of freedom than required to achieve full 3-D motion, but it can move freely in a 2-D plane. For full 3-D motion, multiple modules connect to and cooperate with each other. Thus, modular truss climbing robots can have both properties: functionality and simplicity. A modular truss climbing robot, called Shady3D, is presented as the hardware implementation of this concept. This robot has three motive degrees of freedom, and can form a six-degree-of-freedom structure by connecting to another identical module using a passive bar as a medium. Algorithms to move the robot in a 3-D truss structure have been developed and tested in hardware experiments.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Yoon, Yeoreum

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Daniela Rus and Kamal Youcef-Toumi.

• Mechanical Engineering.

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/1721.1/35654

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/35654