Lateral Disturbance Compensation of a Gondola-Embedded Façade Cleaning Robot via Compliant Planar Arm Structure

Abstract

Façade cleaning is a dangerous task for human workers. If a façade cleaning robot is equipped with a gondola, it can perform façade cleaning with a simple planar manipulator via the vertical movement of the gondola. To clean a façade using a gondola-embedded robot successfully, the disturbance in the lateral direction of the gondola movement should be measured and compensated. In this study, we propose a compliant parallel structure-based position sensing device to measure the lateral directional disturbances. The compliant structure keeps contacts on the edge of the glass frame during the operation of the gondola and obtains disturbance information from forward kinematics of the joint mechanism. The prototype was produced, and experiments were performed on a test bench designed with a similar façade geometry as that of the target building. The disturbance compensation feature of the proposed mechanism was verified by experimental analysis.