Date of Award

January 2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Mechanical Engineering

First Advisor

Jeremiah Neubert

Abstract

The Climbing Collaborative Mobile Manipulator (C2M2) is being developed as a robotic system to support truss outfitting operations. The goal of the project is to build a truss climbing robot and demonstrate gaits that allow the robot to reach any point on the structure. The demonstrated motions are compared to simulated joint data. Design and construction of the robot was completed to allow for the robot to traverse the structure and operate as a stationary manipulator while grappled to the truss. A worm gear actuator system was developed for use in three 2-DOF modules composed into the 6-DOF robot. The robot operates with onboard power and a data tether to a control computer where the gaits are generated and joint positions sent to the microcontroller on the robot. The onboard microcontroller has a finite state machine handling the iterative motions to complete the gait. Testing was performed demonstrating the completion of the gaits with comparisons between the measured joint positions and commanded joint positions. Utilizing the set of gaits generated here motion to any point on a cubic truss structure can be composed. The gaits and demonstrations here show the viability of a 6-DOF robot with three 2-DOF modules for operations on a truss structure.

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