• climbing robot
• grasping
• gripper
• microspines

Climbing robots represent an excellent solution for environmental exploration and field operations. The ability to achieve secure grasps on rocky surfaces makes these robots particularly interesting for the extreme environments encountered during planetary exploration. In this thesis, a preliminary analysis of a gripper for a climbing robot (ReachBot) is performed. The robot consists of a compact body equipped with extensible booms and grippers attached to their extremities. The gripper grasps on rocky surfaces by leveraging microspines, i.e. small needles that engage on surface asperities. The work carried out for this thesis starts with the elaboration of a mechanical model for the interaction between the gripper and a rock. The model is then used to build a Monte Carlo simulation with the goal of estimating the maximum external wrench the gripper can withstand once the grasp is finalized. The output of the simulation is the limit surface, i.e. the boundary of the admissible (safe) region in the wrench space. The limit surface is fundamental at the grasp planning stage to assess the quality of a potential grasp site. Finally, the insights gained from the simulation are leveraged to choose various design parameters and perform a tentative design iteration for a three finger gripper. The main characteristics of the device are the passive activation through a mechanical trigger and the load sharing mechanism, which is desirable in order to equally preload the gripper fingers.