A novel mechatronic design of wall climbing robot for steel storage tank inspection

Abstract

Manual inspection and maintenance of above ground storage tanks can be dangerous and time consuming. This paper presents a wall climbing mobile robot with permanent magnetic adhesion mechanism which can be used for tank inspection. The architecture of mechanical system is attended to in detail. Through a static and dynamic analysis, permanent magnetic adhesion mechanism is chosen for the robot. The tracked locomotion mechanism and the magnetic wheels are used simultaneously. After the robot modeling, the parameters design for the adhesion and locomotion mechanisms are derived.