A study on sensor placement and robotic grippers - improvisation on the wall climbing robot for indoor applications

• Main Author: Subramaniam, Srinivasan
• Other Authors: Li King Ho Holden
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering; DRNTU::Engineering::Mechanical engineering::Robots
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/75662
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Robots are growing and advancing technologically in the 21 st century where the internet of things and other technologies are about to start to dominate. Under the section of robots, wall climbing robots are relatively new. There are many methods to place sensors on elevated places. The bulk of these methods would be to physically put them there. Thus, to avoid physical interactions at an elevated level, a robot to place these sensors at elevated heights would be desired. Of course, this would open new avenues of the wall climbing robots. Some examples would be to deploy a camera phone on the robot to take pictures at dangerous places and heights. Working on an existing robot, the idea would be to reduce the weight of components on the robot thus enabling the robot to carry more weight. The power source would also need to be changed to enable longer runtime. New wheels will also be experimented with the robot to improve traction to the wall. Once the increased payload capacity in the robot is taken care of, the bulk of content in this report would be about designing new gripping assemblies or getting ones that are already available and testing out every single permutation and combination which gives an ideal result in sensor placements. The finalised robot system shows that it is possible for the gripping assembly to carry a load up the wall and almost place it on the wall and climb back down. The placement to the wall will require a little more work. The robot is also able to traverse across walls smoothly. The runtime of the robot and the payload capacity of the robot has also been improved. The overall size of the robot is 170mm * 185mm * 180mm and the final weight is 755.1g and the maximum amount of weight the robot gripping assembly can carry and has been tested is currently 50g.