URARAKA VI: multi-legged robot with suckers to climb walls and pipes

In our previous works, we focused on the advantages of a passive mechanism in realizing autonomous robots, and we developed a multi-legged robot that climbs unknown vertical walls with uneven surfaces. In this study, we improve on our previous robot to broaden its workable area to include vertical pipes and corner walls. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed robot, experiments that included climbing uneven walls, corner walls, a large pipe, and parallel small pipes were conducted. Our results confirmed that the developed robot could climb in these environments. We conclude that the proposed mechanism is effective for climbing such unknown complex environments. The proposed robot is expected to be used in the inspection of large-scale infrastructures.