Design of a Wall-Climbing Robot With Passive Suction Cups

This paper discusses the steady state dynamic behavior of a suction cup based wall climbing robot. It is extremely difficult and dangerous for humans to work on a wall. However, tasks such as cleaning and inspecting vertical surfaces are unavoidable. In order to realize automation of these works, wall-climbing robots have been widely studied in robotics.

Existing System:
In earlier systems, wheeled vehicles or rope climbing robots are used. Wheeled vehicles have several limitations on rough and uneven surface. So in order to rectify this, we go for the new suction cup based wall climbing robot.

Proposed System:
In this paper, we introduce a wall-climbing robot which attaches to a wall by common suction cups. Here, common suction cups belong to passive suction method. The suction cups need a push force to attach to the wall, but they need no energy to keep adhesion. Moreover, when the edges of suction cups are pulled up and air flows into them, the cups will be detached from the wall immediately. By applying these functions of common suction cups, the proposed robot can attach and detach suction cups using a motor. Therefore, it does not need any more actuators only for attaching and detaching. Firstly, the robot is attached to a wall by pushing and attaching suction cups on the bottom. Next, the rotation of the crawler belts makes a suction cup contact and attach to the wall at the front pulleys. When a suction cup reaches the rear pulleys, it is detached from the wall by the rotation of the belts. A sequence of these progresses makes the robot move on the wall to keep adhesion. Here the robot is controlled using DTMF technology; user has to make a call to the mobile connected to the DTMF decoder with microcontroller. After that the mobile will be kept in auto answer mode, by pressing the key from the transmitter mobile the robot is controlled.

Block Diagram: Control Section:

Robot Section:
Power Supply

Microphone

DTMF Decoder

8051 Microcontroller

Driver Circuit

Wall Climbing Robot Mechanism

Hardware Requirements:
8051 Microcontroller with Power Supply DTMF Decoder Relays with Driver unit Wall Climbing Robot Mechanism

Software Requirements:
Embedded C Keil Compiler

Advantages:
Robot can move in vertical surface. This robots move even in the rough surface. Since we use suction cup, the robot has good grip on wall.

Application:
Can be used only for Painting, cleaning in Vertical surfaces.