Abstract
The climbing robot for traveling outside pipe or trees, is required a special mechanism different from the moving mechanism for performing normal flat road. For example, snake-like robot with the articulated mechanism is raised and lowered while rotating the body by controlling the complexity of the joint, or the climbing tree robot that while holding the pillar body by gripping mechanism such as a robotic hand. Under such circumstances, we aimed at implementation of a climbing plant like robot which can climb pipes and trees by winding its body. In this study, we developed winding mechanism inspired by climbing plant. It consists of silicone rubber, reinforced fiber and air hose. It can wind for pipes by using air pressure. In this paper, we report a basic design and prototype evaluation of the winding mechanism driven by air pressure.
