Construction of a Vertical Displacement Service Robot with Vacuum Cups

Abstract

Based on the results of interdisciplinary fields like mechanics, electronics and informatics the autonomous mobile robots are gaining more and more attention. The methods used for movement, actuation and none the last the ability to operate in unknown and dynamic environments give them a great complexity and a certain level of intelligence. The human model is still a challenge for mobility and robot movement. Robot mobility is satisfactorily achieved, in some cases even better with other types of locomotion means, but technical solutions that rigorously reproduce human walking are not yet identified. Feasible solutions can be found in the situation when human mobility reaches its limits (movement on planes with high inclination angles, including 90° – vertical and 180° – parallel to the horizontal plane – ceiling type). Autonomous robot mobility on planes characterized by high inclinations is less tackled in specialty literature, some encountered solutions being objects of patents. The research in this field has a tremendous potential especially in providing new ideas and/or knowledge development. The field of professional and domestic services, especially the wall cleaning of high buildings, is one of the areas that are expected to obtain a strong benefit from the use of robotic systems able to displace on vertical surfaces. The advantages of the technologies that use climbing and walking robots consist mainly of two aspects: • automatic cleaning of high buildings, improvement of technological level and of productivity of service industry in the field of building maintenance; • cleaning robots can be used on various types of building, avoiding thus high costs involved by permanent gondola-type systems (open platform-car or baskets) for individual buildings. The most common attachment principle is the vacuum adhesion (Cepolina et al., 2003), (Miyake et al., 2007), (Novotny&Horak, 2009), where the robot carries an onboard pump to create a vacuum inside the cups, which are pressed against the wall. This system enables the robots to adhere on any type of material, with low energy consumption. Vacuum adhesion is suitable for usage on smooth surfaces, because the roughness can influence a leakage loss in the vacuum chamber.