Development of slider-crank based pole climbing robot

In this paper, a slider-crank based pole climbing robot will be discussed. The robot is designed to climb a pole of perimeter 35cm upward and downward, and its weight is limited to 3kg. It utilizes the combination of slider-crank mechanism for its climbing module and modular mechanism for its gripping module. In this work, the overall climbing motion can be completed in 6 steps. The benefits of this robot are low cost, simple mechanism, easy to control and fabricate. The robot has been built and successfully tested on a PVC tube of diameter 35cm. The average upward and downward climbing speed of the developed robot is 0.375cm/s and 0377cm/s respectively.