I-Corps: Roadmap to Commercialization of City-Climber Technology

这个创新团队项目计划测试基于团队“城市-攀登者”技术的爬壁机器人系统的商业可行性，用于建筑立面检查和玻璃墙清洁应用。目前对建筑外墙进行人工检查的做法既耗时又昂贵，并对人类工人构成风险。City-Terber技术提供了一种解决方案，以满足对建筑外墙的自动检测的强烈需求。此外，可以对城市攀登机器人进行改装，以执行清洁玻璃墙和太阳能电池板等任务。在之前的资助下，这个团队开发了几个爬壁机器人原型，名为City-Craber。与依赖磁力设备和真空吸力技术的传统攀爬机器人以及一些新型攀爬机器人不同，例如涡流攀爬机器人和受壁虎脚启发使用微脊柱的机器人，城市攀登机器人使用空气动力学转子组件，实现了强大的粘附力和高机动性之间的平衡。如果成功商业化，城市攀登机器人将有许多潜在的应用，如：1)检查建筑立面是否有裂缝或其他缺陷；2)检查混凝土结构，如发电厂塔楼、大坝、桥梁等；3)清洁高层建筑的玻璃面板；4)清洁太阳能电池板；5)检查/喷漆/爆破储油罐、飞机、船体、广告牌等；6)监视隧道或地面无法进入的危险区域。

This Innovation Corps project proposes to test the commercial feasibility of a wall-climbing robot system based on the teams "City-Climber" technology for building façade inspection and glass wall cleaning applications. The current practice of manual inspection of building façade is time-consuming, expensive, and poses risk to human workers. The City-Climber technology provides a solution to meet a strong demand for automated inspection of building façades. In addition, the City-Climber robots can be modified to carry out tasks such as to clean glass walls and solar panels. Under prior funding, this team developed several wall-climbing robot prototypes, named City-Climber. Unlike traditional climbing robots that rely on magnetic devices and vacuum suction techniques and some recent novel climbing robots such as vortex climber and the robots using micro-spine inspired by the gecko foot, the City-Climber robots use an aerodynamic rotor package which achieves a balance between strong adhesion force and high mobility. If successfully commercialized, City-Climber robots have many potential applications such as: 1) inspection of building facades for cracks or other defects; 2) inspection of concrete structures such as power plant tower, dam, bridges, etc.; 3) cleaning of glass panels of high-rise buildings, 4) cleaning of solar panels; 5) inspection/spray painting/blasting of storage tanks, aircraft, ship hulls, billboards, etc.; 6) surveillance of tunnels or danger zones where ground access in not available.