Development of a wall climbing robot using the mobile mechanism of continuous traveling waves propagation — Development of a mechanism of wave-absorbing

Abstract

Recently, there have been many studies for developing robots that perform tasks instead of humans. In this study, we focus on tasks to be performed at high places above the ground, which can be dangerous and costly. Therefore, a robot having the ability to climb a wall is preferred for an automatic maintenance system, instead of humans. This paper reports the development of a wall climbing robot which consist of the mobile mechanism using continuous traveling wave propagation and the adhesion mechanism using a centrifugal fan. This mobile mechanism modeled the locomotion mechanism of a snail. This mobile mechanism has a large contact area and is stable. Therefore, it can move stably on both smooth and rough surfaces. In this study, we developed the mechanism wave-absorbing for a mobile mechanism that uses continuous traveling wave propagation. In addition, we developed a wall climbing robot using this mobile mechanism, and conducted climbing experiments on various walls. We confirmed that this robot can climb the walls in the tests. As a result, we found that our experimental results were almost the same as those obtained numerically. Further, the proposed robot could climb on wall of various surfaces.