Mechanism and kinematics analysis of climbing robot for complex curved surfaces

A robot mechanism for complex curved surface with rail was proposed in order to enable the robot to move fast on the complex curved surface. An idea of modularity mechanism designing based on function separate was applied because of the environment with complex constraint. The robot functions consist of scramble and pose adjusting and moving fast along rail, which are realized by two different mechanisms respectively. Scramble and pose adjusting is implemented by quadruped mechanism and moving fast along rail is implemented by wheel-rail mechanism. The movement of scramble and pose adjusting was analyzed, and the analytic equation about control variables of relative joints was obtained for sphere surface. The changing of the relative joints in other different curved surfaces was analyzed in quality. The theory analysis result and the design example show the robot mechanism can adapt different complex curved surface with rails and the control is easy.