Walking on Roofs: Exploring the Potential of Walking Robots for Construction Work on Roofs

Abstract:This paper investigates the feasibility of deploying quadruped walking robots for the automation of work in roof environments. While quadrupeds have demonstrated versatility across various domains, their large-scale deployment remains limited, partly due to lack of application-specific designs. Roof environments represent a novel and unexplored use case, combining high safety risks for human workers with repetitive, strenuous tasks that could benefit from robotic assistance. A dedicated test rig of a roof's surface was designed to evaluate the baseline performance of a commercial quadruped, the \emph{Unitree Go2}, in this new environment. Experiments revealed that standard ball feet are inherently inadequate for locomotion on sloped roofs: slippage increased quadratically with incline angle, get-up and lie-down sequences were only possible on small inclines, and critical failures already occurred regularly on moderate inclines of 25°. This work provides the first systematic assessment of quadruped locomotion in roof environments, highlighting both the potential and the current limitations of this application and establishes a baseline for future research. Effective solutions will require a combination of task-oriented foot designs, advanced contact mechanics and environment-specific control strategies, such as reinforcement learning for roof-adapted gaits.

Robotics (cs.RO)

arXiv:2610.12272 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2610.12272v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.12272 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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