The Climbing Collaborative Mobile Manipulator for Outfitting Truss Structures

The Climbing Collaborative Mobile Manipulator (C2M2) is a novel small truss climbing robot for terrestrial development and demonstrations in support of in-space assembled truss structures. The system was developed to be accessible and replicable leveraging commercial off the shelf parts and 3D printed components, reducing the cost and complexity of production for researchers seeking a testbed for autonomy development. Utilizing a 6 degree of freedom (DOF) configuration composed of three 2-DOF modules, the C2M2 achieves a balance between payload capacity and mobility for the intended role as a mobile manipulator. The system was designed with sufficient joint articulation to operate on a variety of truss geometries using custom gaits. Here, gait development is focused on cubic truss structures that can be fully traversed using a combination of four moves developed in simulation and demonstrated by the physical C2M2. Across the motions for each gait the physical joint position data from encoders measuring the output joint position were compared to the simulated joint positions and joint torques to assess the performance of the system.