(1990-1992). This is a robot which uses permanent magnetic disk wheels to move around the steel walls of oil tanks and ships (Photos. 1, 2). In the past, wheels attached permanent magnets around their peripheral were used in this kind of wall climbing robot. However, as indicated in Fig. 1(a), with this wheel model, only a part of the peripheral contacts the wall and adhesive force is limited. With the Disk Rover, however, one surface of the disk is made into a permanent magnet, as indicated in Fig. 1(b), a part of the disk magnetic wheels are floated to generate rotational propulsion. The attractive force per mass of disk type has been improved by three times better than wheel type. It was experimentally verified that almost no damage was done to the surface of the wall by the disk magnetic wheels in the normal running state. The configuration of the disk rover is indicated in Fig. 2. It is run by converting the rotational velocity of one pair of disk magnetic wheels in a non-linear operation, and it can freely operate even on surfaces which are curved (it can move on cylindrical surfaces with a curve radius of 5 meters).

The height is 0.6 meters; the left/right width is 0.6 meters; the thickness 0.4 meters; and the body is 25 kg. The load mass is approximately 10 kg. The maximum speed is 0.1 m/sec and the magnetic adhesive force is 1500 N.

References:

1. Shigeo Hirose, Hiroshi Tsutsumitake, Ryousei Toyama, Kengo Kobayashi; Disk Rover: A Wall-Climbing Robot Using Permanent Magnet Disks, Proc. IEEE/RSJ Int.Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems,pp.2074-2079(1992)