Joystick-based Control for a Biomimetic Biped Climbing Robot

A joystick-based control method is studied for Climbot, which is a novel 5-DoF (degree of freedom) biomimetic biped climbing robot. The kinematics and the available grasping area of the robot are analyzed firstly. And then, according to the characteristics of the robot biped climbing by switching its fixed-gripper, an intuitional joystick-based operating mode is proposed, in which different operating coordinates are defined for corresponding climbing gaits, and a matrix transform algorithm is presented to keep the robot coordinate system unchanging after switching its fixed-gripper. Finally, road-pole climbing experiments with three gaits (including inchworm-like, turning-around and turning-over gaits) and an application demonstration are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the presented joystick-based control method.