Design, Development and Experimental Evaluation of a Thrust Vectoring Vortex Climbing Robot

Abstract

In this article, a novel Thrust Vectoring Vortex Climbing Robot (TVV-CR) will be presented from a design development and experimental evaluation perspective. To the goal of providing an efficient and robust climbing robot design, with minimized weight and high permissible payload, a novel Electric Ducted Fan (EDF)-based actuation design is proposed for achieving simultaneous locomotion and adhesion via a controllable tilt mechanism, while excluding the need for active motorized wheels. Towards the development of the TVV-CR, the design and development stages will be presented in detail, while proposing a P-PI-based cascaded control structure for evaluating its overall properties. The efficiency of the suggested scheme will be evaluated by multiple experimental results indicating the robot's ability to follow randomly generated paths, while maintaining its adhesion under different surface inclinations.