Design and development of pneumatic suction based wall climbing robot for multiple applications
Robots are quickly moving from industrial domain to service field. The design and development of robot depends on the application for which it is intended for. This paper discusses the design of pneumatic suction mechanism based vertical surface climbing robot. This robot is suitable for inspection of concrete walls, accessing of underside of bridges, reactor pressure vessel inspection, cleaning tall buildings, and many such applications where the robot must be autonomously functioning. Suction cup mechanism has superior performance due to greater gripping capability which ensures more payload and task specific tool carriage. Typical adhesion force and payload calculations are also discussed in this paper.