Development of cable climbing robot for maintenance of suspension bridges

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a wheel-based cable climbing robot system developed for maintenance of the suspension bridges. The robot consists of three parts: a wheel based driving mechanism, adhesion mechanism, and safe landing mechanism. The driving mechanism is a combination of pantograph mechanism, and wheels driven by motors. In addition, we propose a special design of safe landing mechanism which can assure the safety of the robot on the cables when the power is lost. Finally, the proposed robotic system is manufactured and validated in the indoor experimental environments.