Compliant directional suspensions for climbing with spines and adhesives
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Climbing rough vertical surfaces can be useful for applications such as search-and-rescue, surveillance, and the inspection of hard-to-reach locations. In nature, several methods of adhering to vertical surfaces can be observed. Small non-penetrating spines are used effectively by many insects to attach to rough surfaces such as rock, concrete, and similar materials. These structures hook onto surface asperities to provide adhesion. In this thesis, we discuss synthetic arrays of microspines that can be used by robots or humans to attach to rough vertical surfaces. Microspine arrays have the advantages of requiring low preloads, functioning in wet and dusty environments, and supporting loads for extended periods of time without consuming power. Moreover, they can attach to surfaces that are too rough for current synthetic dry adhesives. We discuss the properties of surfaces that make them suitable for use with spines, and present a spine/surface interaction model. We then discuss properties of the spine suspensions necessary for them to be used effectively. The suspensions must permit the spines to conform to the surface, share loads between them, and engage and disengage from the surface. We present spine suspensions that were constructed, and show that they have good measured performance in comparison to ideal designs. We show examples of how spines have been used on climbing robots and in human climbing aids. We also show that the requirements for directional adhesive materials to work on any surfaces are similar to those of spines, and that the principles developed for large spine arrays can be adapted to directional dry adhesives for climbing. We discuss requirements on suspensions for large patches of spines or dry adhesives to enable load-sharing over large areas.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2010 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Asbeck, Alan Thomas |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Electrical Engineering |
| Primary advisor | Cutkosky, Mark R |
| Thesis advisor | Cutkosky, Mark R |
| Thesis advisor | Ng, Andrew Y, 1976- |
| Thesis advisor | Shenoy, Krishna V. (Krishna Vaughn) |
| Advisor | Ng, Andrew Y, 1976- |
| Advisor | Shenoy, Krishna V. (Krishna Vaughn) |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Alan T. Asbeck. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Electrical Engineering. |
| Thesis | Ph.D. Stanford University 2010 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2010 by Alan Thomas Asbeck
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC-ND).
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