Hirose Fukushima Lab


Swarm Type Wall Climbing Robot "Anchor Climber"	BACK TO SPECIAL LOCOMOTION ROBOTS

Movie.1 Basic experiment

(2004～)A large number of huge structures have been made, on the other hand, it is necessary to maintain and inspect them regularly to avoid from the danger of breaking by obsolescence and defects, etc. Structures have been maintained and insepcted by human workers with special skills. However, developments of wall climbing robots which can replace the human workers is pressing need from the view point of safety, cost, efficiency, etc. A high mobility and a large payload capability are important features for wall climbing robots. Unfortunately, conventional designs could only provide one or other but not both of these features at the same time. To solve this ploblem, we proposed swarm type wall climbing robot system, named Anchor Climber. This robot system is composed of two or more Child Units, which can stick firmly to the wall when in a stand-still state, and also can move freely and reliably on the wall with adequate adhering force not to fall from the wall during the moving state, and has a Parent Unit, which has control box, batteries, working devices, etc. Child Units and Parent Unit are connected with Connection Unit. Fig.1 is a model of Anchor Climber system that is working on a large tanker, and figure (b) is a configuration example with two Child Units, wires, reel units, and Parent Unit. Fig.2 is an example of movement sequence configurated with a Parent Unit and four Child Units.

In this resaerch, to realize this system, we have already developed three types of Child Units (Photo.1,2,3) which have been applied the technique of IB Magnet which was developed in this lab. These Child Units adhere to wall and can shift easily above two states, that is to say, these units have enough ability as Child Units of Anchor Climber.

Fig.1 Example of construction and using image of "Anchor Climber"

Fig.2 Example of a sequence of "Anchor Climber"

Photo.1 "Child Unit" Type A

Photo.2 Type B

Photo.3 Type C

Tab. 1: Specifications of Child Units on A Steel Wall (SS400 t=10mm).

	Type A	Type B	Type C
Size [mm]	φ320×H110	L320×W260×H110	L245×W190×H87
Weight [kg]	3.5	3.0	2.8
Max Motion Velocity [m/s]	0.15	0.30	0.15
Max Adhering Force [N]	1100	500	1100
Max Payload [kg]	40	22	40

References:

Shinya Kitai, Kiyoshi Tsuru, Shigeo Hirose; The Proposal of Swarm Type Wall Climbing Robot System "Anchor Cilmber", IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Session FPII-10: Micro Mobile Robots (2005)
Masataka Suzuki, Shinya Kitai, Shigeo Hirose; "Basic Systematic Experiments and New Type Child Unit of Anchor Climber: Swarm Type Wall Climbing Robot System", 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp.3034-3039 (2008)
Masataka Suzuki, Shinya Kitai, Shigeo Hirose; "Advanced Child Unit of "Anchor Climber" Using Modified Internally-balanced Magnet", 2008 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp.1489-1494 (2008)