Wall climbing robot for indoor application

• Main Author: Tan, Ri Liang
• Other Authors: Li King Ho Holden
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Mechanical engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/71443
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Mobile robotic systems are very popular and have been widely used by many different industries in the recent years. They are mainly the unmanned aerial vehicle (sometimes known as a drone), autonomous ground vehicle (AGV), and remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV). All these systems have one thing in common, which is a lack of the ability to climb/move on wall surfaces. In many military operations, small devices such as temperature sensor and mini camera are temporarily installed onto the high wall of buildings. This increase the risk of a soldier that climb up the high-rise wall. Hence, a wall climbing robot that designed to climb up and move on the wall surface will have the advantage for such application. Development of a wall climbing robot is highly challenging as it seeks an approach to disobey the nature’s law of gravity. Many research has been conducted on the wall climbing robot system over the past few decades. However, not many wall climbing system is being employed by the industry or commercialised to the current market. Therefore, this project focuses on the design and development of a wall climbing robot for an indoor application of which is to deploy a device onto the wall surface. The project covers the conceptual designs, material and components selection, and experiment testing of the wall climbing robot and the device deployment mechanism. The detail descriptions of all designs and working principles are presented. The observations and results obtained from the running tests are also discussed in the report. The robot system developed from this project uses a four-wheels drive system for motion and an aerodynamic mechanism for adhesion. The robot can climb on a vertical painted brick wall and make the transition between horizontal ground floor and vertical wall. Besides that, the robot system has a gripper deployment mechanism that used to carry and deploy object. The overall size of the robot is 160 ×185 ×160 mm and weight 780.3 grams.