This paper presents a gripper capable of grasping and recognizing terrain shapes for mobile robots in extreme environments. Multi-limbed climbing robots with grippers are effective on rough terrains, such as cliffs and cave walls. However, such robots may fall over by misgrasping the surface or getting stuck owing to the loss of graspable points in unknown natural environments. To overcome these issues, we need a gripper capable of adaptive grasping to irregular terrains, not only for grasping but also for measuring the shape of the terrain surface accurately. We developed a gripper that can grasp both convex and concave terrains and simultaneously measure the terrain shape by introducing a pin-array structure. We demonstrated the mechanism of the gripper and evaluated its grasping and terrain recognition performance using a prototype. Moreover, the proposed pin-array design works well for 3D terrain mapping as well as adaptive grasping for irregular terrains.

翻译：本文提出了一种能够抓取并识别极端环境下移动机器人地形形状的抓取器。配备抓取器的多肢攀爬机器人在崎岖地形（如悬崖和洞穴壁）上具有良好适应性。然而，在未知自然环境中，此类机器人可能因表面抓取失误或可抓取点缺失而发生倾倒或卡滞。为解决这些问题，我们需要一种能够自适应抓取不规则地形、兼具精确测量地形表面形状功能的抓取器。通过引入针阵列结构，我们开发了一种可同时抓取凸凹地形并实时测量地形轮廓的抓取器。我们阐述了该抓取器的工作原理，并利用原型机评估了其抓取性能与地形识别能力。此外，所提出的针阵列设计不仅适用于不规则地形的自适应抓取，在三维地形测绘方面也表现出良好性能。