A multi-surface climbing robot enabled by a controllable folding chassis, adhesive wheels and dual-propeller

초록

Climbing robots play a vital role in specialized tasks such as infrastructure maintenance and bridge inspection. However, conventional climbing robots often suffer from limited adaptability to diverse wall geometries and varying material properties. To address these challenges, this study proposes a multi-surface climbing robot enabled by a controllable folding chassis, soft adhesive wheels and a dual-propeller thrust mechanism. The controllable folding chassis ensures stable locomotion on walls with varying structures and inclinations, while the dual-propeller system generates sufficient normal force for reliable adhesion. Additionally, four soft driving adhesive wheels featuring microstructured surfaces and fabricated from magnetorheological elastomers enhance tire-wall adhesion. The robot's mechanical performance is analyzed for climbing on walls with different structural configurations, and extensive experiments are conducted on surfaces with varying geometries and materials. It is demonstrated that the robot achieves a peak climbing speed of 26.8 cm/s with a 220 g payload, representing a 70%-400% performance improvement over existing works. Notably, while maintaining stable climbing on inclined surfaces, the unique folding mechanism empowers the robot to navigate complex prismatic surfaces (120 degrees-240 degrees) with speeds consistently exceeding 23.5 cm/s. The robot's superior geometric and adaptability are further validated on surfaces with roughness ranging from 60 to 1000 Cw and across various practical geometries, including flat, cylindrical, curved, and prismatic surfaces.

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