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There are a lot of high-height structures that should be inspected or manipulated frequently due to maintenance purposes. According to the safety considerations and time or cost limitations, substituting the human operator with an automatic robot is inevitable. The main objective of this paper is to design and manufacture a novel climbing robot equipped with grip-based locomotion system which can climb through scaffold structures and trusses to accomplish inspectional and operational tasks. The proposed robot has good maneuverability and stability. The proposed robot is manufactured in order to verify the simulation results with experimental data. The chassis and its corresponding grippers are designed first, and the corresponding model of the system is extracted. This model is used then for designing the controlling strategy of the system. The path planning of the robot is conducted to realize the climbing process by the robot during several steps in an optimum way. The prototype of the proposed robot is manufactured at Kharazmi University called KharazmBot. Experimental results not only show the capability of the manufactured robot toward ascending the mentioned structures but also prove its high stability as a result of its designed gripper and also its good maneuverability as a result of its over-actuated mechanism. Thus, it is concluded that the designed and manufactured climbing robot of this paper can successfully ascend through the pipes and trusses and perform a desired inspectional or operational task with good accuracy and safety while its stability is also satisfied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY: Cable is the most important bearing structure of the cable-stayed bridges. Its safety has been of crucial public concern. Traditional manual cable inspection method has many defects such as low inspection efficiency, poor reliability and hazardous working environment. In this paper, a new wirelessly controlled cable-climbing robot enabling safe and convenient inspection of stay cables is proposed. The designed robot is composed of two modules, joined by four turnbuckles to form a closed structure that clasps the cable. The robot is controlled wirelessly by a ground-based station, and a DC power is supplied via an onboard lithium battery. The climbing principle and mechanical structure of this robot are introduced. The static model of the robot during obstacle negotiation is established. The relationships of the driving force and resistance with obstacle height to determine the obstacle-negotiation capability of the robot are obtained. The effects of cable diameter, cable inclination and preload force on obstacle climbing ability of the robot are also analyzed. The experiments verify that the robot could climb random inclined cables and overcome an obstacle of 2.42 mm in height with a mass of 5 kg payload. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY: Soft robots can perform effectively inspecting than rigid robots in some special environments such as nuclear pipelines and high-voltage cables. This article presents a versatile quadruped soft rod-climbing robot (SR-CR) that consists of four bending actuators and a telescopic actuator. The bending actuator is composed of flexible bellows with multiple folding air chambers, elastic telescopic layer (ETL), and strain-limiting layer (SLL). The telescopic actuator provides the energy for the robot to climb forward. The SR-CR is activated by a control strategy that alternates the body deformation and feet pneumatic clenched for stable climbing. The robot can climb rods at 90°, with the maximum speed of up to 2.33 mm/s (0.018 body length/s). At 0.83 HZ, the maximum moving speed of the robot in climbing horizontally parallel rods can reach 18.43 mm/s. In addition, the SR-CR can also achieve multiple impressive functions, including turning around a corner at a rate of 7 mm/s (0.054 body length/s), carrying a payload of 3.7 times its self-weight on horizontal rods at a speed of 9 mm/s (0.069 body length/s). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY: In this paper, design, modeling, and control of a grip-based climbing robot are performed, which consists of a triangular chassis and three actuating legs. This robot can climb through any trusses, pipeline, and scaffolds structures and can perform any inspectional and operational tasks in the high height which decreases the falling danger of operation and increases the safety of the workers. The proposed robot can be substituted for the workers to decrease the risk of death danger and increase the safety of the operation. Since these kinds of infrastructures are truss shaped, the traditional wheel-based climbing robots are not able to travel through these structures. Therefore, in this paper, a grip-based climbing robot is designed to accomplish the climbing process through the trusses and infrastructures in order to perform inspecting and manipulating tasks. Hence, a proper mechanism for the mentioned robot is designed and its related kinematic and kinetic models are developed. Robot modeling is investigated for two different modes including climbing and manipulating phases. Considering the redundancy of the proposed robot and the parallel mechanism employed in it, the active joints are selected in a proper way and its path planning is performed to accomplish the required missions. Concerning the climbing mode, the required computed torque method (CTM) is calculated by the inverse dynamics of the robot. However, for the manipulation mode, after path planning, two controlling strategies are employed, including feedback linearization (FBL) and adaptive force control, and their results are compared as well. It is shown that the latter case is preferable since the external forces implemented on the end effector tool is not exactly predetermined and thus, the controller should adapt the robot with the exerted force pattern of the manipulator. The modeling correctness is investigated by performing some analytic and comparative simulation scenarios in the MATLAB and comparing the results with the MSC-ADAMS ones, for both climbing and manipulating phases. The efficiency of the designed controller is also proved by implementing an unknown force pattern on the manipulator to check its efficiency toward estimating the mentioned implemented forces and compensating the errors. It is shown that the designed robot can successfully climb through a truss and perform its operating task by the aid of the employed adaptive controller in an accurate way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a modular caterpillar climbing robot using spines as the attaching tools. To improve the reliability of the spines' engagement and disengagement, this paper discusses the reasonable trajectory of the spine and designs a driving mechanism of the spine based on the compliant mechanism theory. Then some compliant modules are designed and realized to build the caterpillar climbing robot. A climbing gait is designed to avoid collisions between the spines and the wall, and allows the robot to climb on a stucco-like wall with a 72○ incline. The real tests reveal that the deformation of the compliant toes reduces the sliding forces between the spines and the wall, and improve the climbing action obviously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To obtain better performance on unstructured environments, such as in agriculture, forestry, and high-altitude operations, more and more researchers and engineers incline to study classes of biologically inspired robots. Since the natural inchworm can move well in various types of terrain, inchworm-like robots can exhibit excellent mobility. This paper describes a novel inchworm-type robot with simple structure developed for the application for climbing on trees or poles with a certain range of diameters. Modularization is adopted in the robot configuration. The robot is a serial mechanism connected by four joint modules and two grippers located at the front and rear end, respectively. Each joint is driven by servos, and each gripper is controlled by a linear motor. The simplified mechanism model is established, and then is used for its kinematic analysis based on screw theory. The dynamics of the robot are also analyzed by using Lagrange equations. The simulation of the robot gait imitating the locomotion of real inchworm is finally presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel robotic platform, Abigaille II, designed to climb vertical surfaces using dry adhesion. Abigaille II is a lightweight hexapod prototype actuated by 18 miniaturized motors. The robot's feet consist of adhesive patches, which have microhairs with mushroom-shaped caps fixed on the top of millimeter-scale flexible posts. A pentapedal gait is used to climb flat vertical surfaces as this gait maximizes the number of legs in contact to the surface. Abigaille can however also walk by using other gaits, including the tripod gait. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A robot has been developed to maintain boiler water-cooling tubes. This robot has a double tracked moving mechanism, an ash cleaning device, a slag purging device, a tubes' thickness measurement device, a marking device, and a control system. This robot can climb up and down the tube wall. A method for the robot to complete many tasks for boiler maintenance in one process cycle is presented. The mechanism of the robot is described. Especially, a kind of special magnetic block structure is designed to obtain strong adhering force using permanent magnets. Experiments in laboratory and real thermal power station have verified that the robot cannot only climb on the surface of the tube wall smoothly, but also take heavy payloads for boiler maintenance operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]