Design of a Wall Climbing Robot with a Unique Topple Prevention Mechanism

This paper describes the design of a low-pressure adhesion-based Wall Climbing Robot (WCR) with tracked locomotion for manoeuvring on flat surfaces. This WCR carries a payload of articulated arm with a wireless video camera. The WCR is equipped with a unique spring-based topple prevention mechanism. The use of WCR is widespread in defence, industries and some household applications where such activities are carried out which are dangerous in nature due to the high height of walls in large structures. These WCRs can be helpful in Low-Intensity Conflict operations to provide situational awareness to the teams involved in the operations. They can be useful in saving precious human lives in this kind of scenario, who have to perform such dangerous tasks in the absence of such types of devices. One of the major problems faced by WCR is its inability to prevent itself from toppling while performing ascending or descending operations during wall climbing manoeuvres. At present there is no publication available on topple prevention in WCR. This is because the majority of developers have worked on the tethered prototype. Some are just lab models to showcase proof of concept where WCR is picked by hand and placed on the wall for demonstration. The initial part of the paper details the WCR design and functioning. The later part of the paper deals with toppling, and its prevention and is explained using the free-body diagram. The effectiveness of the spring mechanism is presented in this paper to prevent the toppling of WCR.