A Lizard-Inspired Quadruped Robot Based on Pressure Sensitive Adhesion Mechanism for Wall Climbing

This paper reports the design, fabrication, and control of a quadruped wall-climbing robot employing pressure sensitive adhesion (PSA) mechanism for climbing vertical walls. The developed robot's kinematics is similar to a lizard's motion. The robot's gait is designed in line with the lizard's bionic gait. The key feature of the developed robot is the compliant mechanism for adhering and peeling of feet and the locomotion mechanism capable of straight as well as turning motion. We demonstrate the robot's climbing experiment on an acrylic plexiglass surfaced vertical wall, which act as an evidence that the robot can perform vertical climbing. We obtained an average robot speed of 1.35 cm/s without payload and 1.25 cm/s with a payload of 20 gm while performing a vertical climbing. Entire robot structure has been fabricated using a combination of 3D printing and 2D laser cutting operations which allows an easy replication of the platform into swarm of climbing robots. We envisage that the possible applications of this robot can be in reconnaissance, inspection, cleaning, and repairing as the lizard-inspired robot offers a higher degree of stealth compared to commonly used drones.