A Novel Nested Reconfigurable Approach for a Glass Façade Cleaning Robot

Nansai, Shunsuke; Elara, Mohan Rajesh; Tun, Thein Than; Veerajagadheswar, Prabakaran; Pathmakumar, Thejus

doi:10.3390/inventions2030018

Cited by 20 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Many climbing mechanisms with diverse features have been developed, since the ability of climbing is one of the crucial aspects of wall cleaning robots [11,12]. In this regard, cleaning robots that climb vertical structures with support of additional mechanical structures, such as ropes/cables [13][14][15] driven by gantry cranes, and rail mechanisms [16,17], have been developed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, cleaning robots that are capable of attaching to a vertical surface and locomotion with the aid of frictional forces arisen from the adhesion to the surface are preferred. In this regard, cleaning robots that use passive suction cups for attaching to vertical surfaces have been developed [12,18,19]. However, the loss of negative pressure during the operation on rough/uneven surfaces, such as cement walls, is the critical shortcoming that hinders the usage of passive suction cups for robots operated in walls [20,21].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Design and Control of a Wall Cleaning Robot with Adhesion-Awareness

et al. 2020

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Wall cleaning robots are developed to cater to the demands of the building maintenance sector. The ability to climb vertical surfaces is one of the crucial requirements of a wall cleaning robot. Robots that can climb vertical surfaces by adhesion to a surface are preferred since those do not require additional support structures. Vacuum suction mechanisms are widely used in this regard. The suction force acting on the robot due to the negative pressure built up is used by these robots for the adhesion. A robot will fall off or overturn when the pressure difference drops down a certain threshold. In contrast, if the pressure difference becomes too high, the excessive amount of frictional forces will hinder the locomotion ability. Moreover, a wall cleaning robot should be capable of adapting the adhesion force to maintain the symmetry between safe adhesion and reliable locomotion since adhesion forces which are too low or too high hinder the safety of adhesion and reliability of locomotion respectively. Thus, the pressure difference needs to be sustained within a desired range to ensure a robot’s safety and reliability. However, the pressure difference built up by a vacuum system may unpredictably vary due to unexpected variation of air leakages due to irregularities in surfaces. The existing wall cleaning robots that use vacuum suction mechanisms for adhesion are not aware of the adhesion status, or subsequently responding to them. Therefore, this paper proposes a design for a wall cleaning robot that is capable of adapting vacuum power based on the adhesion-awareness to improve safety and reliability. A fuzzy inference system is proposed here to adapt the vacuum power based on the variation of the adhesion and the present power setting of the vacuum. Moreover, an application of fuzzy logic to produce a novel controlling criterion for a wall cleaning robot to ensure safety and reliability of operation is proposed. A fuzzy inference system was used to achieve the control goals, since the exact underlying dynamics of the vacuum-adhesion cannot be mathematically modeled. The design details of the robot are presented with due attention to the proposed control strategy. Experimental results confirmed that the performance of a robot with proposed adhesion-awareness surpasses that of a robot with no adhesion-awareness in the aspects of safety, reliability, and efficiency. The limitations of the work and future design suggestions are also discussed.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and Control of a Wall Cleaning Robot with Adhesion-Awareness

et al. 2020

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“…The vertical-surface-climbing robots have various locomotion types, which include, for instance, track wheels, multiple-legged frames [10], and sliding frames [11]. They also include various adhesion techniques [12], such as grippers, blowers, passive cups [13], and active negative suction pressure cups Tun et al [14] and Nazim et al [15]. The commercial robots for window-cleaning applications are growing fast, such as Winbot X, Winbot 950, Winbot 850, Hobot, and Alfawise, etc.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-Sensor Orientation Tracking for a Façade-Cleaning Robot

Vega-Heredia

Ilyas

Ghanta

et al. 2020

Sensors

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Glass-façade-cleaning robots are an emerging class of service robots. This kind of cleaning robot is designed to operate on vertical surfaces, for which tracking the position and orientation becomes more challenging. In this article, we have presented a glass-façade-cleaning robot, Mantis v2, who can shift from one window panel to another like any other in the market. Due to the complexity of the panel shifting, we proposed and evaluated different methods for estimating its orientation using different kinds of sensors working together on the Robot Operating System (ROS). For this application, we used an onboard Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), wheel encoders, a beacon-based system, Time-of-Flight (ToF) range sensors, and an external vision sensor (camera) for angular position estimation of the Mantis v2 robot. The external camera is used to monitor the robot’s operation and to track the coordinates of two colored markers attached along the longitudinal axis of the robot to estimate its orientation angle. ToF lidar sensors are attached on both sides of the robot to detect the window frame. ToF sensors are used for calculating the distance to the window frame; differences between beam readings are used to calculate the orientation angle of the robot. Differential drive wheel encoder data are used to estimate the robot’s heading angle on a 2D façade surface. An integrated heading angle estimation is also provided by using simple fusion techniques, i.e., a complementary filter (CF) and 1D Kalman filter (KF) utilizing the IMU sensor’s raw data. The heading angle information provided by different sensory systems is then evaluated in static and dynamic tests against an off-the-shelf attitude and heading reference system (AHRS). It is observed that ToF sensors work effectively from 0 to 30 degrees, beacons have a delay up to five seconds, and the odometry error increases according to the navigation distance due to slippage and/or sliding on the glass. Among all tested orientation sensors and methods, the vision sensor scheme proved to be better, with an orientation angle error of less than 0.8 degrees for this application. The experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed techniques in this orientation tracking, which has never applied in this specific application of cleaning robots.

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“…This research aims to implement the glass façade cleaning robot through development of a module robot possessing cleaning ability and design of both its locomotion control system and a assembling/disassembling/organizing system. The modular robot strategy accomplishing the façade cleaning on any skyscrapers has been proposed [11]. And, the modular robot based on the strategy has been developed in our previous study [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foot Location Algorithm considering Geometric Constraints of Façade Cleaning

Nansai

Itoh

2019

JASSE

Self Cite

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The purpose of this study is to propose a foot location algorithm for a glass façade cleaning robot. As an initial stage of this study, we set three assumptions regarding aimed module robot and window shape. These assumptions set the system some geometric constraint conditions: Right edge of the right cleaning unit moves along with the line of the right window frame. The cleaning area of right and left cleaning unit overlaps a little. The module robot walks with a step at a time. From the conditions, a foot location determination algorithm is constructed corresponding to four situations. The effectiveness of the algorithm is verified through a numerical simulation.

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A Novel Nested Reconfigurable Approach for a Glass Façade Cleaning Robot

Cited by 20 publications

References 24 publications

Design and Control of a Wall Cleaning Robot with Adhesion-Awareness

Design and Control of a Wall Cleaning Robot with Adhesion-Awareness

Multi-Sensor Orientation Tracking for a Façade-Cleaning Robot

Foot Location Algorithm considering Geometric Constraints of Façade Cleaning

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