LIMBERO: A Limbed Climbing Exploration Robot Toward Traveling on Rocky Cliffs
Kentaro Uno, Masazumi Imai, Kazuki Takada, Teruhiro Kataonami, Yudai Matsuura, Antonin Ringeval-Meusnier, Keita Nagaoka, Mikio Eguchi, Ryo Nishibe, Kazuya Yoshida
AI summary
Problem
Conventional wheeled robots fail on steep, irregular planetary terrain, while existing lightweight legged climbers lack the grasping force or robustness to operate reliably under full Earth gravity.
Approach
The team developed a compact spine gripper that couples biting and hooking motions via a single motor, integrated it into a quadrupedal platform, and created a geometry-based algorithm to map graspable points on rough terrain.
Key results
- Novel spine gripper achieving >150 N grasping force at 525 g
- Geometry-based algorithm for visualizing terrain graspability
- Successful 1 G rocky terrain climbing with 1.4 kg payload
- Open-sourced graspability assessment code
Why it matters
Provides a scalable, high-performance climbing platform for future planetary exploration missions and extreme terrestrial operations.
Abstract
In lunar and planetary exploration, legged robots have attracted significant attention as an alternative to conven- tional wheeled robots, which struggle to traverse rough and uneven terrain. To enable locomotion over highly irregular and steeply inclined surfaces, limbed climbing robots equipped with grippers on their feet have emerged as a promising solution. In this paper, we present LIMBERO, a 10 kg-class quadrupedal climbing robot that employs spine-type grippers for stable locomotion and climbing on rugged and steep terrain. We first introduce a novel gripper design featuring coupled finger-closing and spine-hooking motions, tightly actuated by a single motor, which achieves exceptional grasping performance (>150 N) despite its lightweight design (525 g). Furthermore, we develop an efficient algorithm to visualize a geometry-based graspability index on continuous rough terrain. Finally, we integrate these components into LIMBERO and demonstrate its ability to ascend steep rocky surfaces under a 1 G gravity condition, a performance not previously achieved yet for limbed climbing robots of this scale.