Development of the power assist suit for wall climbing based on UVG

Abstract

This paper proposes the novel power assist suit for wall climbing, based on Universal Vacuum Gripper, in short UVG. UVG is the vacuum pad with the deformable skirt based on the jamming transition of the granular materials. It's capable to adhere uneven surfaces made of stiff materials. In order to climb the wall, two functions are required to the assist suit; lifting up the wearer's body, and gripping the wall surface. In this work, we employ McKibben artificial muscle to lift up the body, and UVG to grip the surface. We evaluated the proposed suit to grip uneven surfaces, and lift up the human subject.