Tether Climbing Robot for Environmental Sampling and Data Collection

Developing robots that can explore environments without disturbing the natural flora and fauna could allow a safe exploration for both the robot and its surroundings. However, this can involve exploring complex or challenging environments, for example extreme slopes or glacial conditions. Developing robots that can explore or ‘climb’ tethers which could be fixed above or along these challenging environments could allow effective exploration and data collection. We ex- plore the governing equations and characterization of a ‘space elevator’ inspired mechanism which exploits capstan friction to move along a tether. By integrating a 3D printed compliant arm, we can perform sampling collection without damaging the environment or disturbing the balance of the robot. The system utilizes visual odometry to enable closed-loop control of the position along the tether, with position control of the soft arm to enable outdoor data collection. After characterizing the design of this novel system we demonstrate the capabilities of the robot system for environmental data-capture experiments.