Relation between Leg/Body Mass Ratio and Power of a Legged Wall Climbing Mechanism

Abstract

Many wall-climbing mechanisms have been developed for inspection of walls of buildings, washing of windows, plant inspection, and so on. It is important to lighten the weight of the wall-climbing mechanism when we design it. Therefore we should use actuators which have minimum power to move the mechanism. We will discuss on a relation of leg and body mass ratio to power demanded for vertical locomotion of the multi-sole biped legged wall-climbing mechanism. In the case of walking mechanisms which move on the horizontal plane, the mass ratio should be zero from a point of energetic efficiency. In the case of wall-climbing mechanisms, a design to minimize the mass ratio is disadvantageous, because, to remove parts from the leg to the body to minimize the mass ratio makes the body heavier and demands more power to move the body. In this paper, the existence of the optimal mass ratio and a design method using the mass ratio is introduced. Additionally, to evaluate the validity of the proposed method, a design example is introduced.