Table Of ContentClimbing andWalking Robots
Manuel Armada Pablo González de Santos
Climbing and Walking
Robots
Proceedings of the 7th International Confer-
ence CLAWAR 2004
ABC
Dr.ManuelA.Armada Dr.PabloGonzálezdeSantos
IndustrialAutomationInstitute–CSIC IndustrialAutomationInstitute–CSIC
CarreteradeCampoReal,Km.0,200 CarreteradeCampoReal,Km.0,200
28500LaPoveda(Madrid),Spain 28500LaPoveda(Madrid),Spain
E-mail:[email protected] E-mail:[email protected]
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2005927314
ISBN-10 3-540-22992-2SpringerBerlinHeidelbergNewYork
ISBN-13 978-3-540-22992-6SpringerBerlinHeidelbergNewYork
Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.Allrightsarereserved,whetherthewholeorpartofthematerialis
concerned,specificallytherightsoftranslation,reprinting,reuseofillustrations,recitation,broadcasting,
reproductiononmicrofilmorinanyotherway,andstorageindatabanks.Duplicationofthispublication
orpartsthereofispermittedonlyundertheprovisionsoftheGermanCopyrightLawofSeptember9,
1965,initscurrentversion,andpermissionforusemustalwaysbeobtainedfromSpringer.Violationsare
liableforprosecutionundertheGermanCopyrightLaw.
SpringerisapartofSpringerScience+BusinessMedia
springeronline.com
(cid:1)c Springer-VerlagBerlinHeidelberg2005
PrintedinTheNetherlands
Theuseofgeneraldescriptivenames,registerednames,trademarks,etc.inthispublicationdoesnotimply,
evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesareexemptfromtherelevantprotectivelaws
andregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse.
Typesetting:bytheauthorsandTechBooksusingaSpringerLATEXmacropackage
Coverdesign:design&productionGmbH,Heidelberg
Printedonacid-freepaper SPIN:10972984 89/TechBooks 543210
Conference Committees
ORGANISING COMMITTEE
General Chair
Manuel Armada
Co-Chairs
Yvan Baudoin Gurvinder S. Virk
Karsten Berns Philippe Bidaud
Giovanni Muscato
International Organising Committee
Chair: Pablo Gonza´lez de Santos
G Abba E Garcia F Pfeiffer
T Akinfiev Z Gong A Preumont
J R Alique V Gradetsky E von Puttkamer
A T de Almeida J C Grieco R Quinn
R Aracil A Halme M Ribeiro
C Balaguer N Heyes M A Salichs
A Ban˜os S Hirose V Sanchez
J Billingsley D Howard J Santos Victor
G Bolmsjo O Kaynak A Semerano
M Buehler R Kelly P Skelton
R Caballero H Kimura L Steinicke
D G Caldwell P Kiriazov S Tachi
R Carelli P Kopacek K Tanie
C Chevallerau K R Kozlowski T J Tarn
H Cruse V Larin M O Tokhi
X Dai D Lefeber S Tzafestas
R Dillmann J Lopez-Coronado A Vitko
B Espiau O Matsumoto T Wadden
G. Fern´andez M Maza K J Waldron
J G Fontaine R Molfino R Walker
L Fortuna L Montano H A Warren
KV Frolov N K M’Sirdi T White
T Fukuda A Nishi W Yan
M Garcia-Alegre J H Oh S Yl¨onen
D E Okhotsimsky M Xie
VI
National Organising Committee
Chair: Salvador Ros
J. A. Cobano T. Guardabrazo M. Prieto
J. Estremera J. L. L´opez L. Pedraza
R. Fern´andez C. Manzano A. Ramırez
V. Garcıa H. Montes C. Salinas
O. Garcıa S. Nabulsi J. Sarria
Proceedings of the
Seventh International Conference on
Climbing and Walking Robots
CLAWAR 2004
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cient´ıficas,
Madrid, Spain
22–44 September 2004
Edited by
Dr M. A. Armada
and
Dr P. Gonz´alez de Santos
Instituto de Automatica Industrial
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cient´ıficas
Madrid, Spain
About the Editors
Manuel Armada received his Ph. D. in Physics
from the University of Valladolid (Spain) in 1979.
He has been involved since 1976 in research activi-
ties related to Automatic Control (singular pertur-
bationsandaggregation,bilinearsystems,adaptive
andnon-linearcontrol,multivariablesystemsinthe
frequency domain, and digital control) and Robot-
ics (kinematics, dynamics, tele-operation). He has
been working in more than forty RTD projects (in-
cludinginternationaloneslikeEUREKA,ESPRIT,
BRITE/EURAM, GROWTH, and others abroad
the EU, especially with Latin America (CYTED)
andRussia.Dr.Armadaownsseveralpatents,andhaspublishedover200pa-
pers(includingcontributionstoseveralbooks,monographs,journals,interna-
tional congresses and workshops). He is currently the Head of the Automatic
Control Department at the Instituto de Automatica Industrial (IAI-CSIC),
andMemberofRussianAcademyofNaturalSciences,beinghismainresearch
direction concentrated in robot design and control, with especial emphasis in
new fields like flexible robots and on walking and climbing machines.
Pablo Gonz´alez de Santos is a research scien-
tist at the Spanish Council for Scientific Research
(CSIC).HereceivedhisPh.D.degreefromtheUni-
versityofValladolid(Spain).Since1981hehasbeen
involved actively in the design and development of
industrial robots and also in special robotic sys-
tems. His work during last ten years has been fo-
cused on walking machines. He worked on the AM-
BLERprojectasavisitingscientistattheRobotics
InstituteofCarnegieMellonUniversity.Sincethen,
he has been leading the development of several walking robots such as
the RIMHO robot, designed for intervention on hazardous environments,
the ROWER walking machine developed for welding tasks in ship erection
processesandtheSILO4walkingrobotintendedforeducationalandbasicre-
search purposes. He has also participated in the development of other legged
robotsuchastheRESTclimbingrobotandtheTRACMINER.Dr.Gonza´lez
de Santos is now studying how to apply walking machines to the field of
humanitarian demining and has designed the new SILO6.
Preface
TheseProceedingsareacollectionofselectedpaperspresentedattheSeventh
International Conference organised by the EC GROWTH Thematic Network
onClimbingandWalkingRobots(CLAWAR).Thisconference,thatwasheld
in Madrid (September 2004), builds upon the highly successful previous Con-
ferences held in Brussels (November 1998), Portsmouth (September 1999),
Madrid(October2000),Karlsruhe(September2001),Paris(September2002),
andCatania(September2003),andprecedesthenextCALWAR’05tobeheld
in London.
The interest in climbing and walking robots has remarkably augmented
over recent years. Novel solutions for complex and very diverse applica-
tionfields(exploration/interventioninsevereenvironments,personalservices,
emergency rescue operations, transportation, entertainment, medical, etc.),
has been anticipated by means of a large progress in this area of robotics.
Moreover, the amalgamation of original ideas and related innovations, the
search for new potential applications and the use of state of the art support-
ing technologies permit to foresee an important step forward and a signifi-
cant socio-economic impact of advanced robot technology in the forthcoming
years. In response to the technical challenges in the development of these so-
phisticated machines, a significant research and development effort has yet
to be undertaken. It concerns embedded technologies (for power sources, ac-
tuators, sensors, information systems), new design methods, adapted control
techniquesforhighlyredundantsystems,aswellasoperationalanddecisional
autonomy and human/robot co-existence.
The European Commission is funding the CLAWAR Network. However,
our aim as scientists and industrialists in this exciting field of robotics, is
not only to promote the knowledge and applications of the complex mecha-
tronic devices under development inside the EU and to show how them can
contribute to a competitive and sustainable growth in our countries, but to
disseminateourtechnologyoutsideEuropeandtobeveryreceptiveofwhatis
beingdoneallaroundtheworld.Confirmingthissituationgreatestawareness
hasbeenreceivedtoCLAWAR’04,andafteracarefulreviewingprocedurethe
XII Preface
conferencefinallyaccommodate115papersofhighquality,wherethenumber
of authors goes over 270. Papers and Members of International Organising
Committee account 26 countries, pointing out the high level of international
activity in this field, that is continuously growing and where many new re-
search groups are being set up throughout the world.
Asasummaryoftheconference,itcanbesaidthatincludedbothstateof
the art and more practical presentations dealing with implementation prob-
lems,supporttechnologiesandfutureapplications.Agrowinginterestinpas-
sive locomotion is reflected by a very interesting number of contributions,
collected at the special session organised by Prof. Martijn Wisse (Delft Uni-
versity of Technology). Some outstanding new climbing and walking robots
were also included, and the conference was going together with a robot ex-
hibition and the traditional student climbing robot competition. Best Paper
Award was offered by Emerald: Industrial Robot: An international Journal,
and special issues of some of the foremost scientific journals on robotics will
bepublishedaftertheconference.Ofmajorrelevanceisthecommitmentwith
our new editors, Springer Verlag, that are in charge of this Conference Pro-
ceedings edition.
In addition to the submitted papers, several keynote speakers made ple-
nary presentations. These included: Professor R. Dillmann (Fakulta¨t fu¨r In-
formatik, Institut fu¨r Prozessrechentechnik und Robotik, University of Karl-
sruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany) on Biologically motivated control of walking ma-
chines; Prof. R. McNeil Alexander (The Faculty of Biological Sciences, Uni-
versity of Leeds, Leeds, UK) on Problems of scale for walking and climb-
ing animals; Prof. D. A. Winter (Department of Kinesiology, University of
Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada) on What bipedal human locomotion
can teach us about motor control synergies for safe robotic locomotion; Prof.
A. L. Ruina (The Cornell BioRobotics and Locomotion Lab, Cornell Uni-
versity, Ithaca, New York, USA) on Some mechanics perspectives on robot
locomotion; and, Prof. M. Xie (Nanyang Technological University School of
Mechanical & Production Engineering Singapore) on Robot vision: a holistic
view.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those involved in or-
ganisingCLAWAR’04.TotheCo-Chairmen(YvanBaudoin,GurvinderSingh
Virk, Karsten Berns, Philippe Bidaud, Giovanni Muscato), to the Plenary
Speakers,totheInternationalOrganisingCommittee,totheNationalOrgan-
isingCommittee,ChairedbyDr.SalvadorRos,DirectoroftheIndustrialAu-
tomationInstitute,andtotheConsejoSuperiordeInvestigacionesCient´ıficas,
who host the Conference, our acknowledgement for their invaluable help and
kind assistance. Special thanks are for Miss Anna Kochan and Dr. Clive
Loughlin from Industrial Robot, that apart from offering the Award joined
us at the conference. CLAWAR Network partners have been very supportive
with their extensive work in the backstage, promoting, widening and ratio-
nalisingtheCLAWARtechnology,fillingexistinggaps,definingnewconcepts
Preface XIII
andexpandingtheapplicationshorizonofclimbingandwalkingrobots.Their
work has been fundamental for the preparation of this 7th Conference.
Particularly, thanks are extensive to the IAI-CSIC colleagues, to its Tech-
nical and Administrative Staff and to the members of the Automatic Control
Department with special mention to: Teodor Akinfiev, Samir Nabulsi, who
was“riding”ROBOCLIMBERoutdoorCSICpremises,HectorMontes,Javier
Sarria, Roberto Ponticelli, Manuel Prieto, Elena Garc´ıa, Joaqu´ın Estremera,
LuisPedraza,Tom´asGuardabrazo,OctavioGarc´ıa,CarlotaSalinas,Mauricio
Alba,AlvaroLou,GabrielBacallado,andJorgeLo´pez,becausewithouttheir
invaluable assistance CLAWAR’04 would never been a sound reality.
June, 2005 Manuel A. Armada
Pablo Gonza´lez de Santos
