The Stair Problem

A robot which moves freely in a building has to be adapted to an environment made for humans. On its way it may encounter small obstacles ( up to 4 cm of hight, e.g. door steps, sills  etc.) and stairs. These stairs often have nosings or ledges and sometimes open risers. The slope of indoor stairs can vary between  25° and 42°. Sometimes you will find in residental buildings even steeper stairs, especially spiral stairs. In public buildings stairs often have a rise s of 17cm and a run a of 29cm (slope approx. 30°)

*We couldn’t find the correct english word. Some papers dealing with stair climbing robots use “ledges“. On the other hand  “STAIR SAFETY, A Review of the Literature and Data Concerning Stair Geometry and Other Characteristics” , a paper prepared for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, did not use the word “ledge” at all, but you will find a lot about safety riscs caused by “nosings”.

Well-known Stair Climbing Robots

If you search the internet, you will find quite a number of stair climbing robots. There are the famous

-two-legged robots( e.g. Asimo, HRP2 ),
-six-legged robots ( e.g. RHex ), and
-tracked robots, mainly in military or law enforcement applications (e.g. Urbie, packBot).

Looking for wheeled robots you will find only a small selection. Best known probably shrimp of the EPFL Lausanne.  Helios V also climbs up and down stairs. There are also some hybrid designs with rotating legs, a mixture of a wheel and a 1-DOF-leg:  whegs, whegsII and mini-whegs IV   ( and RHex). Mini-whegs IV  uses yet another concept: It jumps from step to step.

In the amateur area are successful stair climbers too, for example the Lego robot P’titgneugneu. It climbs stairs in both directions, but it is not well suited for floors, due to its design especially developed for stair climbing.

Link: http://www.stairbot.de/en_beschreib.htm

STAIR CLIMBING WHEELED ROBOTS

Stair Climbing Robot Design Alternative – 1

This is a demo of SM Robot, a stair-climbing robot designed and constructed by Mechatronic students (DEM6 S2 / Dis 10) of PoliPD’s Mechanical Engineering Department for their final semester project.

Video Link: http://youtu.be/3qWYAOGZVM4

Stair Climbing Robot Design Alternative – 2

Mechatronics, Ariel Unviersity Center

Video Link: http://youtu.be/XzKo6KE2H5A

Stair Climbing Robot Design Alternative – 3

Heriot-Watt EPS Mechanical Engineering, Stair climbing Robot Shrimp 2011

Heriot-Watt University, 5th year Masters Students, Robotics and Cybertronics. Based on the EPFL Shrimp. Designed to accommodate a 5kg payload with wireless operation and on board charging system. The Team includes Thomas McEntee, Alexander Owen-Hill, Lukasz Sznajder and Jonathan Clay. Project supervised by Dr X. Kong and Dr J. Shephard. this is a short cut of the project video.

Youtube Link: http://youtu.be/4QDJWIUDSEk

Stair Climbing Robot Design Alternative – 4

Youtube Link: http://youtu.be/ERrDB6qYdLw
Resource Link: http://www.stairbot.de/en_beschreib.htm