Proposal of Swarm Type Wall Climbing Robot System “Anchor Climber” and Development of Adhering Mobile Units

Abstract

High mobility and large payload capacity are important abilities for wall climbing robots. Though conventional designs have achieved only either of these two abilities at the same time, a novel swarm type wall climbing robot system “Anchor Climber” that can achieve both of them is proposed in this paper. This robot system is composed of two or more child units and a parent unit, and wall climbing robots “Adhering Mobile Units” (AM Units) are used as these child units. AM Units can shift two adhering states for moving and for sticking on walls. Three concept models of AM Units using the technique of internally-balanced magnet (IB Magnet) were proposed, and two prototypes with omni-wheels and crawlers were developed. Several experiments were made with developed prototype robots, and suitable configuration and mechanisms of AM Unit were discussed from results of these experiments.