TREE CLIMBING ROBOT. R.PRAVEENBABU, SNEHA.S, S.R.PAVAN KUMAR, B.YUVARAJ, M.SANJAY Sri Krishna College of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore, India

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "TREE CLIMBING ROBOT. R.PRAVEENBABU, SNEHA.S, S.R.PAVAN KUMAR, B.YUVARAJ, M.SANJAY Sri Krishna College of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore, India"

Laureen McCarthy
6 years ago
Views:

Available online at www.ijiere.com International Journal of Innovative and Emerging Research in Engineering e-issn: 2394 3343 p-issn: 2394 5494 TREE CLIMBING ROBOT R.PRAVEENBABU, SNEHA.S, S.R.PAVAN KUMAR, B.

1 Available online at International Journal of Innovative and Emerging Research in Engineering e-issn: p-issn: TREE CLIMBING ROBOT R.PRAVEENBABU, SNEHA.S, S.R.PAVAN KUMAR, B.YUVARAJ, M.SANJAY Sri Krishna College of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore, India ABSTRACT: In this project, many trees like coconut tree, areca nut tree, and palm trees are so tall that climbing them becomes risky. Hence harvesting fruits and nuts and maintaining them becomes difficult. So development of a unique tree climbing mechanism is necessary which may be used for maintaining and harvesting applications. After researching existing climbing robot designs, a robot prototype was built using concepts from the existing designs. The prototype was then tested to determine the effectiveness of the design. The mechanical structure is designed to move the structure upwards against the gravitational forces in successive body movements similar to a tree climber. Tree climbing robot has the potential to be applied to various pursuits, such as harvesting, tree maintenance and observation of tree dwelling animals. Keywords: Harvesting, Developmentt, Mechanism, Prototype, Dwelling I. INTRODUCTION This project is on the design, construction, and testing of a robot to climb trees and to detect Asian Longhorn Beetle infestation. The primary goal was to design and build a robot that could successfully climb a tree. After researching existing climb robot designs, a robot prototype was build using concepts from the existing designs. The prototype was then tested to determine the effectiveness of the design. The prototype proved to be partially successful, being capable of gripping a tree and staying on, but could not move. Though not entirely successful, the project identified many important aspects in a tree climbing robot s design.. Before we could start the design of our robot we decided that it would be beneficial to research existing tree climbing robots. In our research we looked at many different designs to see what were the most common and effective ways people used to develop tree climbing robots. In our research we found that there were many modes of locomotion that various people had implemented in there own designs. RiSE by Boston Dynamics was primary inspiration for our design, but we also looked at alternatives. Ideas like an inchworm design and even flight were considered, but ultimately, a legged design was considered best for the requirements we were given. The objective of the project is to design a tree climbing robot that works under the tree climbing mechanism. It consists of a chassis with springs providing translator motion and motors located at various points at the chassis that promotes the forward motion of the robot. The objectives of the work has been framed for the Design and Fabrication of Tree Climbing Robot. The work from scratch to the listing of materials meeting the requirements are dealt in the forthcoming chapters II. LITERATURE REVIEW Climbing robot is a challenging research topic that has gained much attention from researchers. Most of the robots reported in the literature are designed to climb on manmade structures, but seldom robots are designed for climbing natural environment such as trees. Trees and manmade structures are very different in nature. It brings different aspects of technical challenges to the robot design. In this book, you can find a collection of the cutting edge technologies in the field of tree-climbing robot and the ways that animals climb. It provides a valuable reference for robot designers to select appropriate climbing methods in designing tree-climbing robots for specific purposes. Based on the study, a novel bioinspired tree-climbing robot with several breakthrough performances has been developed and presents in this book. It is capable of performing various actions that is impossible in the state-of-the-art tree-climbing robots, such as moving between trunk and branches. This book also proposes several approaches in autonomous tree-climbing, including the sensing methodology, cognition of the environment, path planning and motion planning on both known and unknown environment. Researchers all around the world work on climbing robots. Most of these climbing robots are capable of climbing regular structures like poles, walls, domes etc. But a very few are capable of climbing trees, main reason being irregular surface and variation of diameter with length.it also requires greater agility and high manoeuvrability to be used as a product. Also the bark of some trees may not be strong enough to bear the weight of the climbing device, hence conventional climbing robots cannot be used for tree climbing applications. Many trees like Coconut tree, Areca nut tree, and palm trees are so tall that climbing them becomes risky. Hence harvesting fruits and nuts and maintaining them becomes difficult. So development of a unique tree climbing mechanism is necessary which may be used for maintaining and harvesting applications. 86

2 Most commonly used design for tree climbing is inch worm design. These models are very slow. The main body of this type of robot is divided into two parts and each part has a gripper. These models using inch worm mechanism are continuous in their motion and can man oeuvre in complex tree environments involving multiple branches. Next common type of design is wheeled robot wherein instead of grippers wheels are used for climbing up. The robot engulfs the tree and locks against it and as the motor rotates, it moves up. The sizes of these robots are comparable to the diameter of tree. These models are suitable for trees with straight and plain trunks.the main drawback is it being slow and there is a possibility of them damaging the tree trunk. Hence most of the models are slow, less agile, have less load carrying capacity. As a result we propose a tree climbing mechanism that can be used to climb trees that are almost straight, like coconut trees and poles with greater agility. The main locomotion of the robot is caused due to the two motors which facilitates simultaneous motion of two consecutive links. This robot grasps the tree with the help of grippers which is acted by a spring. When the motor is ON it unclamps and clamps while the motor is OFF by spring action while harnessing the spring energy for gripping. When one gripper grasps the tree, the whole body makes a revolution such that the next gripper comes up and grips while the other un grasps and the whole process continues. Attachments like pesticide sprayer, weed remover or some harvesting mechanism can be mounted on the robot. With these attachments this robot can act as harvesting or maintenance equipment by the farmers. There are two types of motion in climbing classified as; continuous and discrete type. In the continuous type, energy consumption is reduced and speed is increased. But it is difficult to implement continuous motion, thus discrete motion is adopted in this project. Mechanically the tree climbing robot consists of two segments top and bottom segment. The two segments are joined by a threaded rod. Two DC motors are provided for each segment and a single DC motor is used for rotating threaded rod in order to achieve the linear motion. Movement of a pair of legs are controlled by dc motor in each segments. First tree climbing robot is attached to the trunk with the aid of grippers. The motors used for climbing overcome the moments caused by weight. Mechanical units consist of two segments, joined by a spine which can be extended or retracted. Each segment have four legs with very sharp points as feet. To climb, the legs on the top segment would pinch together and the sharp feet would dig into the bark, securing the robot. Then the spine would be retracted, pulling up the bottom segment. The legs on the bottom segment would then grip the tree, and the top segment would release. Finally, the spine would extend, pushing the top segment upwards, and the process would repeat. The climbing sequence is similar to the way an inchworm climbs. The general design of the robot consists of mainly two parts. First one are the legs for gripping and then the body for climbing. The legs are formed by an Al bar bend into U shape and fitted with very sharp T pins. The legs are some of the most important parts of this robot, because their design determines whether or not the robot can grip onto trees. We decided to have four pairs of legs, each pair controlled by one motor. To make the legs, cut four 8.5 lengths of the aluminium bar. Mark the segments 2.5 from each end. At those marks, bent the aluminium at a right angle, to make a U shape. The proper gripping mechanism is provided by a sharp feet which is attached to the each pairs of legs. To move up and down a tree, the robot extends and contracts by spinning a threaded rod which is coupled to another DC motor using a nut and glue. This method of locomotion is most suited because the threaded rod is easily available, cheap and can be coupled to the motor easily. When the rod is spun clockwise, the two segments are pulled together, and they are pushed apart when it spins counter clockwise. To spin the rod, need a relatively high-torque low-speed motor that would run at 12V. So the threaded rod is coupled to a high torque DC motor to actuate the spine. Thus the specific information related to the fabrication of the tree climbing robot are gathered from various papers and finalized under the literature survey. III. DIAGRAMMATIC REPRESENTATION Fig.1 Robot 2D Diagram 87

3 Fig.2 Block Diagram of Microcontroller Interface 88

4 IV. MICROCONTROLLERINTRODUCTION The major Features of 8-bit Micro ATMEL 89C51 Fig.3 SERIES: 89C51 Family 8 Bit CPU optimized for control applications Extensive Boolean processing (Single - bit Logic ) Capabilities. On - Chip Flash Program Memory On - Chip Data RAM Bi-directional and Individually Addressable I/O Lines Multiple 16-Bit Timer/Counters Full Duplex UART Multiple Source / Vector / Priority Interrupt Structure On - Chip Oscillator and Clock circuitry. V. 3D DESIGN Fig.4 Tree climbing Robot 89

5 VI. CONCLUSIONS This project is made with pre planning, that it provides flexibility in operation. This innovation has made the more desirable and economical. This project TREE CLIMBING ROBOT is designed with the hope that it is very much economical and help full to so many industries. This project helped us to know the periodic steps in completing a project work. This project has also reduced the cost involved in the concern. Project has been designed to perform the entire requirement task which has also been provided.thus we have completed the prototype successfully. This document is a template. An electronic copy can bedownloaded from the Journal website. For questions on paper guidelines, please contact Athe journal publicationscommittee as indicated on the journal website. Information about final paper submission is available from the conference website. REFERENCES [1] Devang P. Soni, Ranjana. M, N.A.Gokul, Swaminathan.S, Autonomous Arecanut Tree Climbing and Pruning Robot, pp IEEE [2] Kawasaki H, Murakami S, Kachi H, Analysis and experiment of novel climbing method Proceedings of the SICE Annual Conference 2008, pp [3] Kawasaki H, Murakami S, KoganemaruK, Development of a pruning robot with the use of its own weight. Proceedings of Clawer 2010, pp [4] Faculty of PSG PSG Design data book for engineers kalaikathiracchagam, [5] Shigley s Mechanical engineering design, McGraw-Hill publication,

Algorithm for Line Follower Robots to Follow Critical Paths with Minimum Number of Sensors

International Journal of Computer (IJC) ISSN 2307-4523 (Print & Online) Global Society of Scientific Research and Researchers http://ijcjournal.org/ Algorithm for Line Follower Robots to Follow Critical