Autonomous Tree Climbing Robot (TREEBOT)

YANAN1, VINOOP.U2, SATISH.M3, YASHW

SHRIVATHSAN NARAY WANTH N.G4
1
Enngineer, Tata Elxsi Ltd., Bangalore, India
2
E
Engineer, Robert Bosch, Bangalore, India
3
En
ngineer, General Motors, Bangalore, India
4
Engineer, TCS, Bangalore, India
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract — This project paper is proposed on an This robot works on a ggripping mechanism wherein
autonomous tree climbing robot, making th he robot realize the on along with a linear motion
there is alternative claw motio
environment and climb on a tree autonom mously. Inspired by achieved by the dc motor making the robot possible to move
inchworms, the algorithm reconstructs th he shape of a tree upward or downwards. The rob bot is but using 4 servo motors
simply by the use of limit switches. It reveals how the
and a single dc motor and the mechanical design was built
realization of an environment can be achieved with limited
information. It is a challenging task as th he shape of tree is using solid works.
complex and irregular. The robot with its well balanced
mechanical design is so equipped that it can climb tree surfaces The special gripping mecchanism allows zero energy
with minimal sensing resources(limit switches).We have consumption in static grippping. With the appropriate
limited out project for the robot to climb b only regular and equipment, Treebot could assist workers to perform
irregular shaped trees but not trees with brranches. The robot arboricultural tasks such as in
nspection and maintenance. It
also equips with a pair of Omni-directionall tree grippers that
could also be used as a mo obile surveillance system to
enable the robot to adhere on a wide varieety of trees with a
wide range of gripping curvature. observe the living behavior of tree
t living animals.

Keywords – Treebot, continuum, grippiing mechanism The paper is organized ass follow. Section II describes
the mechanical design and mechanism
m of the robot. In
I. INTRODUCTION Section III, the motion of the roobot is described. The working
of the robot and the algorithm of its operation is introduced
Climbing robot is a challenging reseaarch topic that has in Section IV while applications of the robot in Section V.
obtained much researchers attention in the recent decade [1], Finally, conclusion is given in Section VI.
[2], [3], [4], [5], [6]. In the literature, most of the climbing
robots are working on climbing urban settiings but seldom of II. MECHANICAL DESIGN
D OF TREEBOT
robots are designed for climbing natural ennvironment such as
trees. The nature of trees and manmade structures is very
different. For example, trees have an irrregular shape and The overall test design of the roobot is as shown in Fig. 1. The
their surface is not smooth. Some types of trees have soft robot structure mainly is compposed of three parts. 1) Front
bark that peels off easily. Hence, mostt of the methods Gripper, 2) Continuum body, 3) 3 Rear Gripper.
applied in the development of wall climbing robots are not
applicable for tree climbing robots. Two grippers are connectedd to the ends of the continuum
Since climbing up trees to perform forestry works is body respectively. The gripper is designed for fastening on a
dangerous for human being, a robot w with tree climbing tree surface. The locomotion of Treebot is similar to an
ability should be developed to assist orr replace human’s inchworm robot except the moving forward motion is
works. achieved by body extension andd contraction rather than body
bending.
Preventing trees from failing is impportant to protect
human life and property in urban areas. M
Most trees in urban
areas require regular maintenance. To reaach the upper parts
of a tree to perform such maintenance, worrkers need to climb
the tree. However, tree climbing is dangerous, and thus the
development of a tree-climbing robot coulld assist or replace
manual work.

This paper proposes a novel tree clim mbing robot named

(as shown in Fig. 1) that has high maneuuverability on tree.
This robot equips with a pair of omnni-directional tree
grippers that are able to grip on tree surfacces in a wide range
of gripping curvature. It enables the robott to grip tightly on
large tree trunks and small branches. The aapplied continuum
maneuver mechanism has large workspacee and high degrees
of freedom (DOF).
Figure 1-Tesst Structure T

978-1-4799-1597-2/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE

 2013 IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Computing Research

A. Front Gripper & Rear Gripper The different features of the gripper section are the
following:
There are many innovative approaches to provide
adhesive force such as vacuum suction magnetic attraction, 1) Compact and light weight
elastomeric adhesive etc. These methods work well on urban
settings such as vertical walls and glass windows that are 2) Adaptive to irregular shape-This feature is achieved
smooth and flat. However, they are not applicable on tree as each claw section is mechanically decoupled.
surface, as the nature of trees is totally different from urban
settings. Claw climbing method is widely used in tree living 3) Zero energy in static gripping-The gripping force is
animals such as squirrels and birds. Through the observation provided by the preloaded mechanical spring
of the tree living animals, the claw gripping is reliable on a
tree surface. As a result, the claw gripping method is adopted
B. Continuum Manipulator
to provide adhesive force.
This section is the most important section of the
proposed design. The functioning of this section determines
The proposed design of front & rear grippers consists of
position of the previously discussed front and rear grippers.
four claws and 2 servo motors on each section. These servo
The continuum body is extendable and bendable and is made
motor movements are responsible for the claw section
up of 3 bendable tendons (springs).A rack and pinion
gripping the tree surface. The claws are designed using
mechanism is applied move the structure. The dc motor
aluminum fiber because of its light weight strong structure.
which is connected to the gears is moved along the spring
The proposed CAD design for front gripper claw & rear
which makes the grippers to either move upwards or
gripper claw is as shown in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3.
downwards. The Fig. 4 describes the structure of the
continuum body.
In addition, since the moving mechanism of each claw is
independent, it allows the claws to travel in different angle.
There are many types of continuum manipulators, such
This ensures that all of the claws penetrate into the gripping
as wire-driven and pneumatic-driven. Most of them are able
substrate, even if the tree has an irregular shape, to generate
to bend in any direction and some are even able to extend to a
the maximum force. The edges of the claw structure are
certain extent. Most current research uses the continuum
placed with thick piercing material to ensure perfect gripping
structure in robot arms, but few researchers have realized
on tree surfaces with barks.
that it can also be applied to maneuvering. The continuum
mechanism is a compliant structure, as it does not contain
fixed joints. Its inherent passive compliance is particular
benefit for maneuvering in an arboreal environment, as it can
often eliminates the need for complex force sensing and
feedback control.
For climbing purposes, the manipulator must be
compact and lightweight. There are many types of
continuum manipulator, but none of them fulfills all of these
requirements. Existing continuum manipulators need to
connect to large external boxes that contain wire, drivers,
motors, or air pumps. Although some pure wire-driven
continuum manipulators have the potential to be more
compact and lightweight, the manipulators are not
extendable. Extendibility is important, the inclusion of
Figure 2-Front Gripper Claw Cad extension ability for continuum manipulators extends the
workspace considerably.

Figure 3-Rear Gripper Claw CAD Design

Figure 4-Continuum body with actuator.
 2013 IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Computing Research

Figure 6.1-Spring Gear Assembly CAD Design

Fig.5 Spacing between the springs in the continuum body.

Due to these limitations, a novel design of continuum

manipulator to maneuver with both bendable and extendable
functionalities is proposed as shown in Fig. 5. The proposed
continuum manipulator is a self-contained module that
actuators are integrated and hence no external control box is
required. It makes the proposed continuum manipulator
compact and lightweight. In addition, the special driving
mechanism allows superior extension ability that the Figure 6.2-Cross-sectional view of Spring Gear Assembly
existing designs cannot achieve.
III. MOTION OF ROBOT
It is formed by three mechanical springs that are
connected in parallel. The distance between the center of the
continuum manipulator and springs are equal and the springs A. Locomotion of robot
are equally separated by 120 degrees as shown in Fig. 5. One
end of spring is fixed on a plate, while the other end does not
have any fixed connection. The springs pass through a plate The locomotion of Treebot is similar to inchworms
which contains a single DC motors along with a simple gear which is a kind of biped locomotion. Fig.7 shows a complete
mechanism to control the length of springs between two climbing gait of the locomotion. It is composed of six
plates independently as shown in Fig.4. Through the control climbing steps. The square colored in grey represents the
of the length of each spring, the continuum manipulator can closed gripper that attached on the substrate while the square
perform bending and extension motions. colored in white represents the opened gripper that detached
on the substrate. The order of motion in the Fig. 7 represents
In practice, it is limited by the length of the springs only. the locomotion of moving forward. The locomotion of
The spring can be treated as a bendable rack. The spring moving backward is just in reverse order.
should only be allowed to bend in any direction but not able
to compress or extend so as to keep a constant gap distance
for pinion to drive. On top of that, keeping the springs in
constant distance through the entire manipulator is important
to keep a uniform shape.

The CAD design for the open assembly of the

continuum body where the spring assembly with proper
spacing as described earlier is to be placed is shown in Fig.
6.1 and Fig. 6.2. From the figure it is to be noted that spring
assembly of the continuum body are placed in appropriate
slots. The linear motion of the continuum body is obtained
by the gear mechanism which is moved along the spring by
the actuator and thus both front and rear claw are moved.
Fig. 7. A complete climbing gait of Treebot (moving forward).
 2013 IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Computing Research

IV. WORKING OF ROBOT

The proposed design of the robot and is being controlled

using a PIC (18f2431) microcontroller and the software used
is Mplab. The robot designed is made to follow the following
algorithm to move it in an efficient manner.

Limit switches are used to detect if the claws of the

gripper have gripped on to the tree or have released the tree.
The explanation of the working robot along with the limit
switch action is as shown in the flowchart in Fig.8.The
master control to the robot i.e. giving higher level commands
like instructing when to stop the robot motion and when to
reverse motion of the robot is achieved by Zigbee protocols.

The following algorithm describes the basic upward

(forward) motion of the robot.

The proposed design of the robot uses 4 limit switches

on each of front and rear claw and 2 switches for the dc
motor action. A total of 8 limit switches on both the claws
and so designed that the effect of only 4 limits switches are
felt.

This decreases the programming complexity and in turn

the sensitive action of the robot increases. Fig. 9 describes
the exact arrangement of the limit switches on the claws.

Once the limit switches in one the grippers produces a

logic high (ON) it remains in that particular state (gripped
state) thus activating the dc motor and other gripper. This
process continues and the entire locomotion is achieved by
this repeated action of the switches which is placed in both
rear and front claw structure.

Figure 9-Limit switch action on Claw design

Fig.8- Flowchart explaining the working of the robot

 2013 IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Computing Research

V. APPLICATIONS

• Assist or replace human forestry works

• Military applications
• Security assistance

VI. CONCLUSION

In this paper, a novel tree climbing robot is presented

that the maneuverability surpasses the state of the art tree
climbing robots. It is composed of a pair of omni-directional
tree grippers for holding the robot on a tree surface and a
novel 3 DOF continuum manipulator for maneuvering. The
locomotion and workspace of the robot are also discussed.

REFERENCES

[1] B. Aksak, M. P. Murphy, and M. Sitti, “Gecko inspired

micro-fibrillar adhesives for wall climbing robots on
micro/nanoscale rough surfaces”, IEEE International
Conference on Robotics and Automation, Pasadena, CA,
USA, pp. 3058-3063, May 19-23, 2008.
[2] H. Prahlad, R. Pelrine, S. Stanford, J. Marlow, and R.
Kornbluh, “Electroadhesive Robots-Wall Climbing Robots
Enabled by a Novel, Robust, and Electrically Controllable
Adhesion Technology”, IEEE International Conference on
Robotics and Automation, Pasadena, CA, USA, May 19-23,
2008.
[3] IEEE paper-A Flexible Tree Climbing Robot: Treebot – D
esign and Implementation by Tin Lun Lam and Yangsheng
Xu. 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and
AutomationShanghai International Conference Center May
9-13, 2011, Shanghai, China.
[4] M. Murphy, M. Sitti, “Waalbot: An Agile Small-Scale Wall
Climbing Robot Utilizing Dry Elastomer Adhesives”,
IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, vol. 12, no. 3,
June 2007.
[5] D. Xu, X. Gao, X. Wu, N. Fan, K. Li, K. Kikuchi, “Suction
Ability Analyses of a Novel Wall Climbing Robot”,
Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Conference on
Robotics and Biomimetics, Kunming, China, December
17-20, 2006.
[6] W. Shen, J. Gu and Y. Shen “Permanent Magnetic System
Design for the Wall-climbing Robot”, Proceedings of the
IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and
Automation Niagara Falls, Canada, July 2005.
[7] I.D. Walker, C. Carreras, “Extension versus Bending for
Continuum Robots”, International Journal of Advanced
Robotic Systems, vol. 3, no.2, pp. 171-178, 2006.