Wall Climbing Robots with Track-wheel Mechanism

This paper presents a family of climbing robots that are using a track-wheel mechanism for locomotion mechanism. There are three robots: High speed vertical climbing robot, Flexible caterpillar robot, and Multi-linked climbing robot. The high speed vertical climbing robot uses suction pads to be attached on walls, and the robot has an advantage of high climbing speed of 14 m/min. The flexible caterpillar robot can configure its body shape according to external structure condition by using flexible joints. The robot is attached on the wall using segmented magnets. The robot can perform 90 degrees wall-to-wall internal transition without complex controller. The multi-linked climbing robot is composed of three main bodies that are controlled by kinematic relations. By using the three bodies, the robot can perform 90 degrees wall-to-wall internal transition. The adhesion mechanism is same with the High speed vertical climbing robot (suction pad). Mechanism description and experimental results are presented. The robots will be applied in wall cleaning and ship building applications. Keywords-climbing robot; track-wheel mechanism; highspeed climbing; transition.