Palm Tree Climbing Robot
Palm trees have a significant economical value as source of income for the countries that have them. It is dangerous to climb those high trees to perform some operations, therefore, a robot has been designed to climb the tree and carry out some tasks such as spraying insecticides or picking dates. The mechanism adopted for this climbing robot consists of three pneumatic actuators; one main actuator and two auxiliary ones, two encircling arms, springs and pneumatic valves. The arms embrace the trunk of the tree and both springs and the two auxiliary actuators will keep the arms in suitable positions either to allow the arm to move up or to carry the weight of the robot. The motion that comes from the main actuator is applied to the upper arm and the lower one to raise the robot up the tree trunk and is controlled by the valves. Air pressure used does not exceed 6 bars. The movement of the robot to climb up and down is controlled by an Arduino controller. The pneumatic circuit uses three solenoid actuated 4 2 way pneumatic valves with spring return. These valves are powered with a 12Volt DC signal coming from a double Hbridge. The microcontroller and the solenoids share the same power source, a 12V rechargeable battery, with a 9V voltage regulator on the microcontroller side.