Experimental investigation on climbing robot using rotation-flow adsorption unit
Experimental investigation on climbing robot using rotation-flow adsorption unit
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DOI：
10.1016/j.robot.2018.03.008
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发表时间：
2018-07
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Qiang Zhou;Xin Li
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Qiang Zhou;Xin Li
传统的使用真空吸盘的攀爬机器人存在一些技术问题，例如，不能爬粗糙壁，吸盘摩擦阻力大，磨损大，越障能力差。本研究将一种新的负压吸附机构应用于攀爬机器人的设计。该机构利用空气的旋转惯性效应产生并保持负压和吸附力，因此，包含该机构的结构被称为旋转流吸附单元。吸附单元最重要的特点是它可以在不与墙壁接触的情况下发挥作用，这从根本上解决了传统攀爬机器人的这些技术问题。在本研究中，我们设计了方形旋流吸附单元来提高机器人的负载能力（吸附力增加18%），并设计了软裙结构来提高机器人的越障能力（例如，穿过15毫米高的凸起）。最后，我们制作了一个原型的攀爬机器人，并测试了它在几个实际的墙壁（非常粗糙的墙壁，包含深槽的墙壁，包含大凸起的墙壁）。实验结果表明，该机器人能够在粗糙壁面上稳定地运动，并能轻松地通过较大的凹槽和凸起。
Traditional climbing robots that use vacuum suckers have some technical problems, e.g., inability to climb coarse walls, frictional resistance and abrasion of suckers, and poor obstacle-surmounting ability. In this study, a new negative pressure adsorption mechanism is applied to the design of a climbing robot. This mechanism generates and maintains negative pressure and adsorption force by using the air’s rotational inertia effect; therefore, the structure incorporating this mechanism is called the rotational-flow adsorption unit. The most important characteristic of the adsorption unit is that it can function without being in contact with the wall, which fundamentally solves these technical problems associated with traditional climbing robots. In this study, we designed a square-shaped rotational-flow adsorption unit to improve the robot’s load ability (18% increase in the adsorption force) and designed a soft skirt structure to improve the robot’s obstacle-surmounting ability (e.g., passing through 15-mm-high bulges). Finally, we fabricated a prototype of the climbing robot and tested it on several actual walls (extremely coarse wall, wall containing deep groove, and wall containing large bulges). The test results show that our prototype robot can move stably on coarse walls and can pass over large grooves and bulges easily.