Design of a Robust Stair Climbing Compliant Modular Robot to Tackle Overhang on Stairs
This addresses a specific challenge in robotics for stair navigation, but appears incremental as it builds on existing modular robot concepts with geometric modifications.
The paper tackled the problem of designing a robot to climb stairs with overhangs by modifying wheel geometry and using robust parameter optimization, resulting in a prototype that successfully scaled stairs of varying dimensions.
This paper discusses the concept and parameter design of a Robust Stair Climbing Compliant Modular Robot, capable of tackling stairs with overhangs. Modifying the geometry of the periphery of the wheels of our robot helps in tackling overhangs. Along with establishing a concept design, robust design parameters are set to minimize performance variation. The Grey-based Taguchi Method is adopted for providing an optimal setting for the design parameters of the robot. The robot prototype is shown to have successfully scaled stairs of varying dimensions, with overhang, thus corroborating the analysis performed.