Design and control of miniature climbing robots with nonholonomic constraints

Presents a model of nonholonomic motion planning for mobile robots. In particular, we describe the problem of motion planning for biped miniature climbing robots. The main distinct characteristics of our model, compared to other existing models, are the existence of a non-singleton set of equations and its piecewise continuity. The biped structure used in our robot entails modeling the motion with a dual set of kinematic equations and non-holonomic constraints. The non-holonomy characterization of the constraints is also proved using one of corollaries of the Frobenius theorem and the controllability of our biped robots under these non-holonomic constraints is also verified using the control Lie algebra. The under-actuated design chosen for this robot also contributes to the non-holonomic nature of the mechanical structure. This design has proved to be effective in keeping the robot light-weight without sacrificing its maneuvering capability. However, motion planning for these robots is more difficult than that of fully-actuated robots.