ReachBot is a joint project between Stanford and NASA to explore a new approach to mobility in challenging environments such as martian caves. It consists of a compact robot body with very long extending arms, based on booms used for extendable antennas. The booms unroll from a coil and can extend many meters in low gravity. In rocky environments the booms are equipped with low-mass grippers that use spines for a secure grasp. The booms are strong in tension but vulnerable to buckling in compression or bending.
Motion planning with ReachBot therefore has similarities to multifingered grasp planing — instead of fingers that push, we have booms that pull. Given its very long reach, ReachBot has a large dexterous workspace that simplifies motion planning. However, the sequence of poses must also consider what happens if any grasp fails. In this talk I will introduce the ReachBot design and motion planning considerations, report on a recent field test with a single ReachBot arm in a lava tube in the Mojave Desert, and discuss future plans.
Mark R. Cutkosky is the Fletcher Jones Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. He joined Stanford in 1985, after working in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and as a design engineer at ALCOA, in Pittsburgh, PA. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1985.
Cutkosky’s research activities include robotic manipulation and tactile sensing and the design and fabrication of biologically inspired robots.
Cutkosky’s laboratory can be found at http://bdml.stanford.edu