A wall climbing robot with closed link mechanism

Abstract

A compact and robust wall climbing robot, called MRWALLSPECT, has been developed. The robot is designed for scanning external surfaces of gas or oil tanks and inspecting defects with nondestructive testing tools during navigation. It accomplishes fundamental three-degree-of-freedom locomotion such as translation and rotation over the wall with a novel closed link mechanism that we have originally devised. Its design and implementation issues are discussed and the results of tests are addressed.