Climbing Robots? Mobility for Inspection and Maintenance of 3D Complex Environments

Abstract

For complex climbing robots, which work in difficult 3D outdoor environments, the gravity force has an important influence with respect the robots changes during its motion. This type of climbing robots is self-supported in the complex 3D structures (bridges, skeleton of the buildings, etc.) which require periodic, manually performed inspections and maintenance. The use of non-conventional climbing robots for this type of operation is highly appropriate. Their locomotion system commonly comprises arms/legs that permit the robot's 3D mobility (gait). These mechanisms also enable the robot to support itself and guarantee its stability. This paper presents the main features of non-conventional climbing robots' mobility on complex 3D environments: power supply, number of DOFs, lightweight structure, gait, speed, secure grasp, etc. It also covers the general theory underlying the design of climbing robots, their kinematics, with its specific, unconventional mobility. The paper not only describes the climbing robot mobility theory but also provides several examples taken from the ROMA and MATS robots families. The developed robots have high degree of autonomy with totally on-board control system. These autonomous robots demonstrate in the course of real experimentation that the criteria for design, control strategy and path planning are accurate. Finally, the paper examines trends in climbing robot technology.

A Survey of Technologies and Applications for Climbing Robots Locomotion and Adhesion

“…• Inspection: bridges (Balaguer et al (2005); Robert T. Pack and Kawamura (1997)), nuclear power plants (Savall et al (1999); Yan et al (1999)), pipelines (Park et al (2003)), wind turbines ), solar power plants (Azaiz (2008)), for scanning the external and internal surfaces of gas or oil tanks (Longo and Muscato (2004b); Park et al (2003); Sattar et al (2002); Yan et al (1999)), offshore platforms (Balaguer et al (2005)), and container ships );…”

Transition Analysis and Its Application to Global Path Determination for a Biped Climbing Robot

“…Configuring different locomotion and attaching mechanisms, these robots differ significantly in mobility and flexibility. In-depth discussions on this topic could be found in [18,19]. Among these robots, SM 2 , ROMA, Shady3D, 3DCLIMBER, Treebot and Climbot, having the characteristic of bipedal climbing, are considered to be dominant.…”

Inverse Kinematic Analysis of a Redundant Hybrid Climbing Robot

“…On the one hand, hybrid robots have the high manoeuvrability and large workspace of serial robots, which is beneficial for exploring complex 3D structures. On the other hand, they also have the high rigidity and load-to-weight ratio of parallel robots, which is useful for climbing robots since they must support their own weight [16].…”