Design and Optimal Research of a Non-Contact Adjustable Magnetic Adhesion Mechanism for a Wall-Climbing Welding Robot

Abstract

Wall-climbing welding robots (WCWRs) can replace workers in manufacturing and maintaining large unstructured equipment, such as ships. The adhesion mechanism is the key component of WCWRs.As it is directly related to the robot's ability in relation to adsorbing, moving flexibly and obstacle-passing. In this paper, a novel non-contact adjustably magnetic adhesion mechanism is proposed. The magnet suckers are mounted under the robot's axils and the sucker and wall are in non-contact. In order to pass obstacles, the sucker and the wheel unit can be pulled up and pushed down by a lifting mechanism. The magnetic adhesion force can be adjusted by changing the height of the gap between the sucker and the wall by the lifting mechanism. In order to increase the adhesion force, the value of the sucker's magnetic energy density (MED) is maximized by optimizing the magnet sucker's structure parameters with a finite element method. Experiments prove that the magnetic adhesion mechanism has enough adhesion force and that the WCWR can complete wall-climbing work within a large unstructured environment.

Analysis of Magnetic Wheel Adhesion Force for Climbing Robot

“…This technology lends advantages such as: adaptable clamping to a variety of surfaces, low power consumption, resistant to external contamination, and quick, controllable attachment/detachment. San-Millan (2015;Wu et al, 2012) presents three ways with which permanent magnet adhesion can be implemented. The first two involve standard wheels integrated with several cylindrical magnets.…”

A survey of platform designs for portable robotic welding in large scale structures

“…Wu et al at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, [33][34][35] also makes use of a non-contact magnetic adhesion mechanism for their climbing robot. Additional features of the robot are obstacle-passing ability and adjustable magnetic adhesion force ( fig.…”

Design of a climbing robot platform with protection device

“…Assuming ¼ 1 and a _ y þ by ¼ K 2 ðx À yÞ, the coefficient values can be calculated by equation (16) according to equations (11) and (15).…”

“…15 Wu et al designed noncontact adjustable magnetic adhesion mechanism for a wall-climbing welding robot. 16 Daltorio et al adopted insect-inspired attachment mechanisms for Mini-Whegs TM to climb steep surfaces. 17 He et al focused on the development of a novel wet adhesion pad for wallclimbing robots that can scale walls, and the experimental results show that the climbing ability of the robot with the pads is exceptional.…”

“…10 Unlike other robotic systems, the gravitational effect is so dominant that different approaches are required for the robot system to operate on the façade. 1 To overcome the gravitational effects, several studies have been conducted using various methods such as magnetic adsorption, 3,9,10,[11][12][13][14][15][16] biomimetic adsorption, 17,18 gripping type, 19 rail-guided type, 20 negative pressure adsorption, 21,22 and so on. Grieco et al developed a six-legged climbing robot prototype able to climb on ferromagnetic walls carrying high payloads available for inspection, maintenance, and intervention tasks in industrial environments.…”