Series of Multilinked Caterpillar Track‐type Climbing Robots

Abstract

Climbing robots have been widely applied in many industries involving hard to access, dangerous, or hazardous environments to replace human workers. Climbing speed, payload capacity, the ability to overcome obstacles, and wall-to-wall transitioning are significant characteristics of climbing robots. Here, multilinked track wheeltype climbing robots are proposed to enhance these characteristics. The robots have been developed for five years in collaboration with three universities: Seoul National University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Yeungnam University. Four types of robots are presented for different applications with different surface attachment methods and mechanisms: MultiTank for indoor sites, Flexible caterpillar robot (FCR) and Combot for heavy industrial sites, and MultiTrack for high-rise buildings. The method of surface attachment is different for each robot and application, and the characteristics of the joints between links are designed as active or passive according to the requirement of a given robot. Conceptual design, practical design, and control issues of such climbing robot types are reported, and a proper choice of the attachment methods and joint type is essential for the successful multilink track wheel-type climbing robot for different surface materials, robot size, and computational costs. C 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Rotary Microspine Rough Surface Mobility

“…Other vertical climbing designs use tracks of adhesive materials in place of wheels to increase the area in contact with the wall [14,15] or an inchworm style gait [16,17]. Four wheeled and legged designs at this characteristic scale have also been shown with similar manufacturing techniques to this work [18,19].…”

A Novel Nested Reconfigurable Approach for a Glass Façade Cleaning Robot

“…One is the legged type method as in the sky cleaners mentioned in [12,13], the robot proposed by Yano et al [29,30], and by Kawasaki et al [31]. Another method for wall climbing is the wheel/crawler-type, as in the works presented by Gao et al [32,33], Miyake et al [34,35], and Kim et al [36,37]. The robots that belong to the legged-type family have discontinuous contact points on the glass surface and are controllable within the range of operation of the robot.…”

A Survey of Wall Climbing Robots: Recent Advances and Challenges

“…Kim et al have developed a wall climbing robot using the suction cup crawler principle wherein mechanical valves are installed onto the suction cups [35]. The robot platform uses two tracks with twelve suction cups on each track, and these suction cups are activated by a novel mechanical valve design [36].…”

“…Lee et al have developed a modular wall climbing robot with a crawler utilizing permanent magnets [35,63,64]. This platform is characterized by its high payload capacity and wall transition ability.…”