Design and Construction of a Tree-climbing Robot

This report describes the research, mechanical analysis, design methodology, and testing procedures that were used to design and build a tree-climbing robot. The goal of this project was to build a tree-climbing robot to satisfy the requirements established by the USDA and aid in the detection of Asian Longhorn Beetles. The following report details the threat that invasive beetle species pose to the United States, how tree climbing robots may help eliminate invasive species, a review of robots that have successfully climbed trees, and how effective they may be at locating beetles, our considerations when developing a tree climbing robot design, the preliminary robot design, the final robot design, mechanical analysis, programming structure, and the results that were achieved by the robot

Design and Construction of a Tree-Climbing Robot

This report describes the research, mechanical analysis, design methodology, and testing procedures that were used to design and build a tree-climbing robot. The goal of this project was to build a tree-climbing robot to satisfy the requirements established by the USDA and aid in the detection of Asian Longhorn Beetles. The following report details the threat that invasive beetle species pose to the United States, how tree climbing robots may help eliminate invasive species, a review of robots that have successfully climbed trees, and how effective they may be at locating beetles, our considerations when developing a tree climbing robot design, the preliminary robot design, the final robot design, mechanical analysis, programming structure, and the results that were achieved by the robot

Tree pruning/inspection robot climbing mechanism design, kinematics study and intelligent control : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Mechatronics at Massey University, Manawatu Campus, New Zealand

Forestry plays an important role in New Zealand’s economy as its third largest export earner. To achieve New Zealand Wood Council’s export target of $12 billion by 2022 in forest and improve the current situation that is the reduction of wood harvesting area, the unit value and volume of lumber must be increased. Pruning is essential and critical for obtaining high-quality timber during plantation growing. Powerful tools and robotic systems have great potential for sustainable forest management. Up to now, only a few tree-pruning robotic systems are available on the market. Unlike normal robotic manipulators or mobile robots, tree pruning robot has its unique requirements and features. The challenges include climbing pattern control, anti-free falling, and jamming on the tree trunk etc. Through the research on the available pole and tree climbing robots, this thesis presents a novel mechanism of tree climbing robotic system that could serve as a climbing platform for applications in the forest industry like tree pruning, inspection etc. that requires the installation of powerful or heavy tools. The unique features of this robotic system include the passive and active anti-falling mechanisms that prevent the robot falling to the ground under either static or dynamic situations, the capability to vertically or spirally climb up a tree trunk and the flexibility to suit different sizes of tree trunk. Furthermore, for the convenience of tree pruning and the fulfilment of robot anti-jamming feature, the robot platform while the robot climbs up should move up without tilting. An intelligent platform balance control system with real-time sensing integration was developed to overcome the climbing tilting problem. The thesis also presents the detail kinematic and dynamic study, simulation, testing and analysis. A physical testing model of this proposed robotic system was built and tested on a cylindrical rod. The mass of the prototype model is 6.8 Kg and can take 2.1 Kg load moving at the speed of 42 mm/s. The trunk diameter that the robot can climb up ranges from 120 to 160 mm. The experiment results have good matches with the simulations and analysis. This research established a basis for developing wheel-driven tree or pole climbing robots. The design and simulation method, robotic leg mechanism and the control methodologies could be easily applied for other wheeled tree/pole climbing robots. This research has produced 6 publications, two ASME journal papers and 4 IEEE international conference papers that are available on IEEE Xplore. The published content ranges from robotic mechanism design, signal processing, platform balance control, and robot climbing behavior optimization. This research also brought interesting topics for further research such as the integration with artificial intelligent module and mobile robot for remote tree/forest inspection after pruning or for pest control

The Problem of Adhesion Methods and Locomotion Mechanism Development for Wall-Climbing Robots

This review considers a problem in the development of mobile robot adhesion methods with vertical surfaces and the appropriate locomotion mechanism design. The evolution of adhesion methods for wall-climbing robots (based on friction, magnetic forces, air pressure, electrostatic adhesion, molecular forces, rheological properties of fluids and their combinations) and their locomotion principles (wheeled, tracked, walking, sliding framed and hybrid) is studied. Wall-climbing robots are classified according to the applications, adhesion methods and locomotion mechanisms. The advantages and disadvantages of various adhesion methods and locomotion mechanisms are analyzed in terms of mobility, noiselessness, autonomy and energy efficiency. Focus is placed on the physical and technical aspects of the adhesion methods and the possibility of combining adhesion and locomotion methods

Constructing living buildings: a review of relevant technologies for a novel application of biohybrid robotics

Biohybrid robotics takes an engineering approach to the expansion and exploitation of biological behaviours for application to automated tasks. Here, we identify the construction of living buildings and infrastructure as a high-potential application domain for biohybrid robotics, and review technological advances relevant to its future development. Construction, civil infrastructure maintenance and building occupancy in the last decades have comprised a major portion of economic production, energy consumption and carbon emissions. Integrating biological organisms into automated construction tasks and permanent building components therefore has high potential for impact. Live materials can provide several advantages over standard synthetic construction materials, including self-repair of damage, increase rather than degradation of structural performance over time, resilience to corrosive environments, support of biodiversity, and mitigation of urban heat islands. Here, we review relevant technologies, which are currently disparate. They span robotics, self-organizing systems, artificial life, construction automation, structural engineering, architecture, bioengineering, biomaterials, and molecular and cellular biology. In these disciplines, developments relevant to biohybrid construction and living buildings are in the early stages, and typically are not exchanged between disciplines. We, therefore, consider this review useful to the future development of biohybrid engineering for this highly interdisciplinary application.publishe

The Marr and Albus Theories of the Cerebellum: Two Eary Models of Associative Memory

The Marr and Albus theories of the cerebellum are compared and contrasted. They are shown to be similar in their analysis of the function of the mossy fibers, granule cells, Golgi cells, and Purkinje cells. They both predict motor learning in the parallel fiber synapses on the Purkinje dendrites mediated by concurrent climbing fiber input. This prediction has been confirmed by experimental evidence. In contrast, Marr predicts these synapses would be facilitated by learning, while Albus predicts they would be weakened. Experimental evidence confirms synaptic weakening

Combining a hierarchical task network planner with a constraint satisfaction solver for assembly operations involving routing problems in a multi-robot context

This work addresses the combination of a symbolic hierarchical task network planner and a constraint satisfaction solver for the vehicle routing problem in a multi-robot context for structure assembly operations. Each planner has its own problem domain and search space, and the article describes how both planners interact in a loop sharing information in order to improve the cost of the solutions. The vehicle routing problem solver gives an initial assignment of parts to robots, making the distribution based on the distance among parts and robots, trying also to maximize the parallelism of the future assembly operations evaluating during the process the dependencies among the parts assigned to each robot. Then, the hierarchical task network planner computes a scheduling for the given assignment and estimates the cost in terms of time spent on the structure assembly. This cost value is then given back to the vehicle routing problem solver as feedback to compute a better assignment, closing the loop and repeating again the whole process. This interaction scheme has been tested with different constraint satisfaction solvers for the vehicle routing problem. The article presents simulation results in a scenario with a team of aerial robots assembling a structure, comparing the results obtained with different configurations of the vehicle routing problem solver and showing the suitability of using this approach.Unión Europea ARCAS FP7-ICT-287617Unión Europea H2020-ICT-644271Unión europea H2020-ICT-73166

UAV/UGV Autonomous Cooperation: UAV Assists UGV to Climb a Cliff by Attaching a Tether

This paper proposes a novel cooperative system for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) which utilizes the UAV not only as a flying sensor but also as a tether attachment device. Two robots are connected with a tether, allowing the UAV to anchor the tether to a structure located at the top of a steep terrain, impossible to reach for UGVs. Thus, enhancing the poor traversability of the UGV by not only providing a wider range of scanning and mapping from the air, but also by allowing the UGV to climb steep terrains with the winding of the tether. In addition, we present an autonomous framework for the collaborative navigation and tether attachment in an unknown environment. The UAV employs visual inertial navigation with 3D voxel mapping and obstacle avoidance planning. The UGV makes use of the voxel map and generates an elevation map to execute path planning based on a traversability analysis. Furthermore, we compared the pros and cons of possible methods for the tether anchoring from multiple points of view. To increase the probability of successful anchoring, we evaluated the anchoring strategy with an experiment. Finally, the feasibility and capability of our proposed system were demonstrated by an autonomous mission experiment in the field with an obstacle and a cliff.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, accepted to 2019 International Conference on Robotics & Automation. Video: https://youtu.be/UzTT8Ckjz1