Abstract
It has been expected for a long time to be developed a robot to work on the vertical wall of tall buildings, side wall of large ships and so on.
Forces produced by magnetism and low pressure of air sucking to the fan are available to sustain the robot on the vertical wall, and the wheels, crawlers and some other walking mechanisms can be used as the methods of moving. A good many machines are able to build by combining these mechanisms for various applications.
Two kinds of robot models were built and tested. Air was sucked from the peripheral nozzle of the suction surface to the fan and the crawlers were used as a moving system. They have two dangerous situations of falling and slipping, and the limitations of them are determined. It is also important to decrease a shock of collision by a falling mass in practical use. In such a case a damper composed of a spring and dashpot is usable. The optimum design condition of it is derived for a given condition.
To study the matching of aerodynamic characteristics between a suction surface and a fan is important to understand the safety conditions of this type robot and to design an active controller to avoid the danger of falling, and it is done for an above model as an example.
