Grant: Idea to Innovation

Development of autonomous robots that can replace humans for doing dangerous, dirty and dull tasks have been the center of attention within the research community for the past 2 decades. In this context, a self-reconfigurable climbing machine has been designed and developed at the University of Regina. This robotic system can be categorized as a new product since it is capable of doing a multitude of tasks that no other single robot could do in the past. With proper joint-level motion coordination, it would be able to climb staircases, travel on rough terrains, move inside empty ducts and/or pipes, and climb over ropes/poles with varying cross sections, shapes, and sizes. It can also move inside narrow passage ways by reconfiguring itself. The design of a reconfigurable robot capable of traversing a wide range of unconventional terrains is the novelty in this invention.Our robot provides a simple, light weight, modular, and re-configurable machine that can travel on a largenumber of terrains. No specialised guide or rail would be needed to make the robot operational. This woulddrastically reduce the setup time and the footprint, which would make our robot very cost effective. It can climb over deflective and flexible material such as ropes. The training required to operate the robot would require minimum man-hour due to its simplicity and low degrees of freedom. Some applications are:Surveillance and inspection: this robot can be used in the surveillance of hot spots in a battle combat, aerial reconnaissance, and search and rescue.Inspection of infrastructure: the robot can be employed for inspecting hard-to-reach spaces. Examples are: bridges, construction sites, radio towers, flame towers in refineries, power posts, and oil wells. Inspection of pipelines: it can move inside horizontal and vertical pipes doing inspection using on board sensors. This market study would pave the way towards taking this novel invention to the market.