In this paper, the hybrid-climbing legged robot is designed, implemented, and practically tested. The robot has four legs arranged symmetrically around the body were designed for climbing wire mesh fence. Each leg in robot has 3DOF which makes the motion of the robot is flexible. The robot can climb the walls vertically by using a unique design of gripper device included metal hooks. The mechanism of the movement is a combination of two techniques, the first is the common way for the successive movement like gecko by using four limbs, and the second depending on the method that used by cats for climbing on the trees using claws, for this reason, the robot is named hybrid-climbing legged robot. The movement mechanism of the climbing robot is achieved by emulating the motion behavior of the gecko, which helped to derive the kinematic equations of the robot. The robot was practically implemented by using a microcontroller for the mainboard controller while the structure of the robot body is designed by AutoCAD software. Several experiments performed in order to test the success of climbing on the vertical wire mesh fence.
In recent years, the urgent need for robotics applications in various sensitive work areas and high buildings has led to a significant development in the design of robots intended for climbing rough surfaces. Where, attention became focused on the ideal clinging mechanism. In this paper, a gripper of the climbing robot has been designed to achieve clinging on rough walls. The objective of this design is to be lightweight with high performance of clinging, therefore, a robot gripper has been designed based on a model of a limb inspired by the hand and claws of a cat, in which the robot claws were implemented by fishing hooks. These hooks are arranged in an arc so that each hook can move independently on the wall’s surface to increase the force of clinging to the rough wall. SolidWorks platform has been used to design the clinging limb and implemented using a 3D printer. In addition, the proposed design has been validated by performing several simulations using the SolidWorks platform. Experimental work has conducted to test the proposed design, and the results proved the success of the design.