Analysis of the aerodynamic performance of a twin-propelled wall-climbing robot based on computational fluid dynamics method

Abstract

We present a twin-propelled wall-climbing robot that can stably adsorb and move quickly on a vertical wall by exploiting the propeller’s reverse thrust as the adsorption force and the wheel as the movement method. This paper derives and theoretically analyses the aerodynamic characteristics of the twin-propelled wall-climbing mobile robot system exploiting the momentum inflow model and blade element theory and measures the reverse thrust of a single propeller through real-world experiments. Additionally, Computational Fluid Dynamics simulation software analyzes the influence of structural parameters, such as the lateral spacing of the twin-propeller fixed plate, the width of the fixed-rotor plate, and the inclination angle of the double-rotor on the airflow around the robot. Experiments on the adsorption and movement performance of the dual-rotor wall-climbing robot on a vertical wall demonstrate that the designed twin-propelled wall-climbing robot can stably adsorb and move on a vertical wall.

DP-Climb: A Hybrid Adhesion Climbing Robot Design and Analysis for Internal Transition

“…When the rotor starts to rotate, the air will form a pressure difference at the upper and lower interfaces of the propeller to make the robot press against the wall. By changing the pitch angle of the rotor, the robot's motion direction can be changed to achieve wall forward and backward or static attachment action [27]. However, in the old version of WCR, which mainly uses the reverse thrust of the propeller and front drive wheels as the power, the robot appears to have a tail-flicking situation during the movement process, and it adopts an open-loop system to control the robot [28].…”