2021 International Conference on Automation, Robotics and Applications
The Design of a Scissor Stair Climbing Robot
Dong Zhang 1,†*
1 1
School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering
South China University of Technology
Guangzhou, China
dzhang@scut.edu.cn
2021 7th International Conference on Automation, Robotics and Applications (ICARA) | 978-1-6654-0469-3/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICARA51699.2021.9376425
Yansen Yang 2
2 3
School of Electric Power Engineering
South China University of Technology
Guangzhou, China
201830203337@mail.scut.edu.cn
Abstract—With the rapid development of robot technology,
the scope of application of robots is becoming wider and wider,
changing people's life and working style. In this study, we
developed a stair climbing robot, without changing McKenna's
wheel under the premise of omnidirectional mobile chassis
movement way, the fork lift scissors mechanism to complete the
climb the steps of the robot movement, with the help of dynamic
simulation and finite element analysis tool to optimize the robot
mechanical structure, improve the performance of the robot, and
in physical test proved the feasibility of the design. We expect this
stair climbing robot to expand the range of indoor robot
operations at the lowest cost.
Keywords—Robot, Scissor Lifting Mechanism, Stair Climbing
I. INTRODUCTION
Responding to the human environment is an essential
ability for a robot to operate alongside people. This includes
climbing stairs unassisted, moving through a congested area,
conveniently interacting with humans, and moving across
inclined terrain. Among the various working environments of
intelligent mobile robots, stairs are one of the most common,
most special, and most difficult man-made environmental
obstacles. Recently, there is a growing interest in the
development of stair-climbing inverted pendulum robots [1, 2].
How to make intelligent mobile robots able to move and
walk smoothly in the stair terrain is one of important research
topics in this field. At present, smart mobile robots designed
for various operating environments and terrains mainly use
mobile structure forms: wheeled, crawler, foot, linkage, etc.
According to different ways of moving, many scholars have
designed different methods of climbing stairs. Compared with
the legged robot, wheeled mobile robot is simple in design and
relatively easy to control [3, 4]. Wheeled robots usually need to
change the structure of the mobile chassis or wheels to achieve
the ability to climb stairs, so that the front and rear wheels fall
on steps of different heights, which is more complicated in
operation and control [5,6]. Yang and Bewley [7] developed a
two-wheeled robot with a rod-like leg mechanism in which the
wheel axis could slide along the rod. When its rod-shaped legs
come into contact with the ground, the robot can use the wheel
as a reaction wheel to balance itself out. Compared with

† These authors contributed equally to this work.
* Corresponding authors.
978-0-7381-4290-6/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE
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Junpeng Xuan 1,†
School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering
South China University of Technology
Guangzhou, China
jxuanaa@connect.ust.hk
Zhongyi Guo 3,*
Center for experimental Technology
College of Pharmacy, Jinan University
Guangzhou, China
guozhongyi@jnu.edu.cn
wheeled robots, foot-type robots are more adaptable to
complex environments. The rhythmic climbing gait can also
make the robot easily climb stairs, but the speed of movement
on flat ground is slower and the efficiency is lower [8-10]. To
neutralize the advantages and disadvantages of the above two
methods, some scholars combine the two movement methods
to form a wheel-leg compound structure, which can adapt to
different environments [11, 12]. There are also robots that have
been developed that have several shutdowns and require many
drives [13, 14]. However, this method is complicated in
structure and high in cost. We want to design a stair climbing
device with simple structure and low cost.
The omni-directional mobile chassis is a classic robot
mobile system [15], which can move in any direction at any
time on the plane, and can easily adapt to the working
environment with narrow space and high mobility
requirements, but it is more in terms of overstepping obstacles.
Powerless. This paper designs a scissor-type lifting mechanism
without changing the structure of the omnidirectional mobile
chassis, which is installed at the bottom of the robot, and the
opening angle of the scissor arm is controlled by a geared
motor to lift the robot to a specific height. So that the robot can
climb over stepped obstacles of various heights.
II. METHODS
A. The Design of the Omni-Directional Moving Chassis
Omni-directional moving chassis can be divided into three
main parts: suspension part, wheel group and chassis frame.
(1) The suspension part, as shown in Figure 1, is composed of
metal hinge, suspension board, shock absorbing spring,
shock absorbing spring seat and other parts.
Fig. 1. The suspension
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 The hinge is made of thickened aluminum with large
damping to increase the overall damping of the suspension part.
Suspension board selects 7075 aeronautical hard aluminum
with the best hardness and high strength characteristics of
common aluminum alloy, with a thickness of 3mm, and adopts
laser cutting or milling processing. Shock absorber spring base
is widely used, low cost, high impact toughness 6063
aluminum machining. Considering that the overall weight of
the robot after loading can reach more than 40kg, metal shock
absorbing springs with built-in damping oil and large damping
coefficient are selected, and each group of suspension consists
of three shock absorbing springs. The end of the damping
spring is a metal fish eyeball structure, which provides a
certain degree of freedom to ensure that the damping spring
can work normally even under off-axis pressure. The
suspension part is mounted on the chassis frame as a whole by
two metal hinges and a suspension spring seat, while the wheel
assembly is mounted on the suspension board through the
corresponding holes in the suspension board.
(2) Wheel set, as shown in Figure 2, consists of McNamum
wheel, flange shaft, wheel set mounting seat, coupling and
reduction motor.
(3) The deceleration motor is RM3508 BRUShless DC
deceleration motor of DJI Innovation (DJI, Shenzhen,
China), with a deceleration ratio of about 19:1. This
brushless DC deceleration motor can be combined with
RM C620 for sinusoidal drive, which can achieve higher
stability and efficiency than traditional square wave drive,
as well as features such as position feedback, temperature
detection and information storage. Figure 3 shows the load
characteristic curve of this motor when it USES RM C620
for current closed-loop control.
Fig. 3. RM3508 motor load characteristic curve
(4) The chassis frame is shown in Figure 4. A 10x10 square
aluminum tube with a thickness 0.5-1mm is adopted. The
wheel set is installed on the suspension part, and the
suspension part is installed on the aluminum welding
frame of the chassis, thus forming the entire omni-
directional moving chassis, as shown in Figure 4 (b).

Fig. 4. The chassis (a. Aluminum alloy welded frame b. Move the chassis in
Fig. 2. The wheelset (a. Group as a whole b. The McNamara c. The flange all directions)
shaft structure d. The plum coupling)

The supporting wheel hubs on both sides of McNamum B. The Design of Cutting Fork Lifting Mechanism
wheel are formed by stamping sheet steel. The standard (1) The cutting fork-lifting platform. The shear fork lifting
bearing weight of a single wheel is 15kg and the diameter is platform is composed of a lifting platform, a base, and a shear
153mm. The flange end of the shaft is connected to the fork lifting mechanism. The shear fork lifting mechanism is a
mounting hole on the McNamum wheel and the other end is key component of the entire platform, and its structural
connected to the coupling. The main function of the coupling is strength will directly affect the mechanical properties of the
to transfer the movement of the motor shaft to the flange shaft entire platform. Its structure is shown in Figure 5 [16].
fixed to the wheels. Under normal operation, the coupling and
the shaft do rotary motion together. In the case of abnormal
conditions such as blocking, the coupling will play the role of
overload protection to prevent the connected parts from being
damaged due to excessive load. Coupling can be divided into
two categories: rigid and flexible. In the actual working
environment of the scissors climbing robot discussed in this
paper, the robot may encounter some accidents such as blocked
rotation. For the purpose of protecting related components of
the robot, the plum blossom coupling as shown in Figure 2 (d)
is selected. This is a flexible coupling with elastic components,
in addition to the compensation of the two axis of the
coaxiality error, reduce the assembly accuracy requirements of
Fig. 5. The fork-lifting platform structure
related parts, but also in the occurrence of a lock-up and other
unexpected circumstances play the role of protection of related For the scissors climbing robot mentioned in this paper,
parts. combining the actual requirements of load, lifting height,

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weight and so on, one layer of scissors lifting mechanism can
meet the working requirements of the robot. Figure 6 is the
correlation analysis of the lifting mechanism of a shear fork.
Since the distribution of the shear fork is symmetrical, in the
actual analysis of relevant forces, only the analysis of a single
shear fork arm is usually required. Stress analysis of the load-
bearing part of the structure is shown in Figure 7.
Fig. 6. The force analysis of the lifting mechanism of the cutting fork. (a.
The analysis of the whole force of the lifting mechanism of one layer of
cutting fork. b. The force analysis of single shear arm.)
The force analysis formula:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
Fig. 7. The analysis of load-bearing structure.
The force analysis formula:
(5)
(6)
(2) The shear fork arm. The cutting arm is mainly
composed of one - way wheel, one - way wheel shaft, cutting
arm, cutting arm connector and other parts. The lower end of
the cutting fork arm is connected to the one-way wheel through
a one-way axle, and the two one-way wheels can only rotate in
the direction close to each other, that is, the movement
direction of the two wheels during the lifting of the two cutting
fork arms, so as to ensure that the robot as a whole avoids
relative sliding with the ground during the lifting process. The
upper ends of the two cutting fork arms are connected with the
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related parts of the driving part of the cutting fork respectively
through the cutting fork arm connector, which mainly plays the
role of power transmission and installation and fixation (Figure
8&9).
Fig. 8. The design of the scissor arm part.
Fig. 9. The parts design (a. The one way round b. The one-way shaft c. The
cut the fork arm d. The cutting arm connector)
(3) The drive the cutting fork arm. The drive of the cutting
fork arm is mainly composed of aluminum frame of the cutting
fork drive part, ball screw power transfer part, ball screw
power transfer part, ball screw fixing part, fixed Angle code,
motor base, reduction motor and ball screw, etc. The
decelerating motor drives the ball screw to rotate, converts its
rotation motion into a straight line motion, and then transfers
the power to the cutting fork arm through the ball screw power
transfer parts and cutting fork power transfer parts, so as to
achieve the purpose of driving the cutting fork up and down.
The deceleration motor is fixed on the aluminum frame of the
driving part of the cutting fork through the motor base, one end
of the ball screw is connected to the motor shaft through the
coupling, and the other end is fixed on the aluminum frame
through the ball screw fixator. The whole driving part of the
cutting fork is connected with the omni-directional moving
chassis and the cutting fork arm respectively by connecting the
Angle code and the power transfer part of the cutting fork, thus
forming a whole (Figure 10).
Fig. 10. The drive of the cutting arm
 When the robot needs to ascend the steps, the mechanism
mainly plays the role of lifting the whole robot to the
appropriate height, and maintaining the stability of the robot
body during the lifting process to avoid overturning (Figure 11).
Fig. 11. The cutting fork-lifting mechanism
(4) The cutting fork stair climbing robot. The robot is
mainly divided into two parts: omni-directional moving chassis
and cutting fork lifting mechanism. The two parts are
connected by sliding track and rodless cylinder. What is shown
on the way is the full extension state of the robot in the process
of climbing stairs (Figure 12).
Fig. 12. The overall design of the scissors climbing robot.
As shown in Figure 13, when the robot moves close to the
step, it will follow steps (a) to (e) to complete the whole step
ascending process step by step.
Fig. 13. The flow chart of cutting fork stair climbing robot climbing steps
III. KINETICS ANALYSIS
Since the entire scissor lift mechanism is symmetrical, it is
simplified, and only the two scissor arms on one side are
dynamically analyzed to verify whether the two RM3508
geared motors have enough torque to drive the scissor lift
mechanism to integrate the robot Lift up.
Import the 3D model of the scissor arm into Solidworks
Motion, set the direction of gravity to the positive semi-axis
direction, (straight down in the picture), and the size is
9806.65mm/s^2. The total weight of the robot with the load is
40kg, and the weight of the scissor part is ignored for the time
being. The average load of each scissor arm connector is 10kg,
which is 100N. Secondly, in Solidworks Motion, add a load of
100N to each of the two scissor arm connectors in a vertical
downward direction. Then, add a linear motor in the same
direction as the driving force provided by the ball screw driven
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by the motor in the actual situation to each of the two scissor
arm connectors to set the driving force (Figure 14).
Fig. 14. Dynamic analysis of the scissor arm on one side
After the simulation, the changes in the amplitude of the
two driving forces applied to the connector of the scissor arm
are obtained. It can be seen from Figure 5 that the peak value
of the driving force appears at the beginning of the movement
process, and the magnitude reaches 792N. In actual working
conditions, the driving force is transmitted by the ball screw
driven by the RM3508 motor, and a ball screw driven by an
RM3508 is responsible for driving the two scissor arms, so a
ball screw driven by an RM3508 should provide at least 1584N
thrust. RM3508 DC brushless decelerator uses RM C620 ESC
for current loop control, which can easily reach 4N·M output
torque, so take RM3508 output torque T=4N·M. The formula
(7) is the calculation formula for the thrust of the ball screw.
(7)
P is the output thrust; η is the transmission efficiency of the
screw, the size is about 0.9~0.95; T is the input torque; L is the
lead of the screw. The robot discussed in this article uses a ball
screw with a lead of 4mm, that is, L=4mm; take the
transmission efficiency η=0.9. From formula (7), it can be
calculated that the thrust provided by the ball screw is 5652N,
which is about 3.5 times the required thrust of 1584N, which
can fully meet the needs of actual work (Figure 15).
Fig. 15. Changes in the amplitude of the driving force applied to the
connector of the scissor arm
IV. FINITE ELEMENT STRESS ANALYSIS
The magnitude and direction of the load received by the
scissor arm during the work process are always changing, so
we use Solidworks Simulation to perform a finite element
stress analysis on it to determine whether it meets the
requirements.
The scissor arm is made of 6063 aluminum with a tensile
strength σb (MPa) ≥ 205, a yield strength σ0.2 (MPa) ≥ 170,
and an elongation δ 5 (%) ≥ 9. In the previous section, we
know that the maximum load of the scissor arm is 792N. After
the simulation, as shown in Figure 16, the maximum static
displacement of the scissor arm has reached 3.767e+001mm,
and obvious inelastic deformation has occurred. Meet the
actual work requirements. Taking into account the need to
strengthen the parts as a whole, but also avoid adding too much
weight, this article innovatively connects the scissor arm and a
non-hollowed carbon fiber board with the same shape through
riveting to form a "composite board". As shown in Figure 17,
perform finite element stress analysis on the optimized scissor
arm again, and the static displacement analysis results obtained
are shown in Figure 18. It can be seen from the analysis result
that the maximum static displacement of the scissor arm at this
time is 1.030e-001mm, which has been reduced to an
acceptable range.
Fig. 16. The static displacement results of the finite element stress analysis of
the scissor arm
Fig. 17. The optimized scissor arm
Fig. 18. The static displacement results of the finite element stress analysis of
the optimized scissor arm
V. PHYSICAL TEST
The final scissor-type stair climbing robot is 13.8kg in the
air, which is less than 15kg limited by the design standard. In
the case of a load of 25kg, the robot is tested on a flat ground,
and the linear movement speed can reach 3m/s or more,
exceeding the 2m/s required by the design standard, and all
meet the design requirements. In order to verify the actual
climbing performance of the robot, we tested it on a 200mm
high step. The series of photos in Figure 19 show the process
of the robot successfully climbing the steps.
First, the robot moves to the edge of the step and gets as
close to the vertical plane at the edge of the step as possible, as
shown in Figure 19 (a).Secondly, the two deceleration motors
of the lifting mechanism drive the two ball screws connected
with it to rotate at almost the same speed, and the related power
transfer parts drive the two cutting arm at almost the same
speed. The shear fork lifting mechanism, which is contracted at
the bottom of the chassis, gradually extends to lift the main
body of the robot to an appropriate height smoothly, as shown
in Figure 19 (b). Then, the main body of the robot slides along
the slide track and climbs the steps under the push of the
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rodless cylinder, as shown in Figure 19 (c).Then, the two
deceleration motors of the cutting fork lifting mechanism drive
the cutting fork arm to shrink to the initial state through ball
screw, as shown in Figure 19 (d). Finally, driven by the rodless
cylinder, the shear fork lifting mechanism, which has shrunk to
the initial state, is retracted to the bottom inside the robot
chassis, and the whole step climbing process is finished, as
shown in Figure 19 (e).
Fig. 19. The cutting fork stair climbing robot for physical test
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper designs a scissor-type stair climbing robot based
on scissor-type lifting mechanism and Mecanum omni-
directional moving chassis, so that the robot can climb stairs
smoothly without changing the original omni-directional
moving chassis. The output torque of the motor required by the
cutting fork-lifting mechanism is tested through simulation,
and a composite plate is proposed according to the load borne
by the cutting fork arm, so as to meet the strength requirement
and avoid excessive weight. Finally, the feasibility of the
design is verified by physical test. The stair climbing robot
designed by us can provide research ideas for the skill
improvement of indoor service robot, and can also be
integrated with fire inspection robot, etc., to develop into a
robot that can carry out safety inspection on the whole building.
In the following work, we can add Bluetooth or RC module for
wireless control, and optimize the design of the robot to adapt
to unpredictable terrain and environment.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Conceptualization, Dong Zhang; Data curation, Junpeng
Xuan; Writing, Yansen Yang; Editing, Zhongyi Guo.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by a grant of Achievement
transformation project of basic scientific research operating
expenses of central universities, China (No: 2019CG02).
 Data availability: All data were experimentally obtained.
Conflicts of interest: The authors declare that there is no
conflict of interest regarding the publication of this paper.
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