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ClimbLab: MATLAB Simulation Platform for Legged Climbing Robotics

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Robotics for Sustainable Future (CLAWAR 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 324))

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Abstract

This paper presents an open-sourced MATLAB simulation and analysis platform dedicated to legged climbing robots. This simulator enables the design of any limbed robotic system as an articulated multi-body with a floating base and simulates it walking and climbing in an arbitrary environment. The main variable environmental parameters are inclination, gravity, and ground stiffness, and any point cloud can be installed as the terrain map. Furthermore, the simulator employs a rigid body dynamics engine. This paper first describes the simulator structure, and the computational flow and next presents the representative simulation examples where quadrupedal robots assumed gripping on the wall or climbing on the steep slope.

K. Uno and W. F. R. Ribeiro—Contributed equally to this work.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Made available at https://github.com/Space-Robotics-Laboratory/ClimbLab.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 19J20685.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Space Robotics Lab (SRL), Department of Aerospace Engineering, Tohoku University, Aoba 6-6-01, Aramaki-Aza, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi, 980-8579, Japan

    Kentaro Uno, Warley F. R. Ribeiro, Yusuke Koizumi, Keigo Haji, Koki Kurihara & Kazuya Yoshida

  2. VisionSpace Technologies GmbH, Robert-Bosch Straße 7, 64293, Darmstadt, Germany

    William Jones

Authors
  1. Kentaro Uno
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  2. Warley F. R. Ribeiro
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  3. Yusuke Koizumi
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  4. Keigo Haji
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  5. Koki Kurihara
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  6. William Jones
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  7. Kazuya Yoshida
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kentaro Uno .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering, Kwansei Gakuin University, Hyogo, Japan

    Daisuke Chugo

  2. School of Engineering, London South Bank University, London, UK

    Mohammad Osman Tokhi

  3. School of Engineering, Polytechnic Institute of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Manuel F. Silva

  4. Chuo University, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan

    Taro Nakamura

  5. School of Engineering, University of Lincoln, Lincolnshire, UK

    Khaled Goher

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Uno, K. et al. (2022). ClimbLab: MATLAB Simulation Platform for Legged Climbing Robotics. In: Chugo, D., Tokhi, M.O., Silva, M.F., Nakamura, T., Goher, K. (eds) Robotics for Sustainable Future. CLAWAR 2021. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 324. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86294-7_20

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