Kinematics Modeling of a Wheel-Based Pole Climbing Robot (UT-PCR)

This paper is concerned with the derivation of the kinematics model of the University of Tehran-Pole Climbing Robot (UT-PCR). As the first step, an appropriate set of coordinates is selected and used to describe the state of the robot. Nonholonomic constraints imposed by the wheels are then expressed as a set of differential equations. By describing these equations in terms of the state of the robot an underactuated driftless nonlinear control system with affine inputs that governs the motion of the robot is derived. A set of experimental results are also given to show the capability of the UT-PCR in climbing a stepped pole.