Designing Compliant Spine Mechanisms for Climbing

This paper presents design principles for compliant mechanisms used to support and load spines used in climbing rough vertical surfaces. The design principles ensure that constraints associated with spine/surface interactions are satisfied and that when multiple spines are placed in contact with a surface they share the load without premature failures or spine overloading. The design principles are demonstrated with a compliant mechanism that has been used for robotic and human climbing on surfaces such as brick, stucco and concrete.