Proposed wall climbing robot with permanent magnetic tracks for inspecting oil tanks

Abstract

This paper presents a proposed research on the wall climbing robot with permanent magnetic tracks. A brief review about the wall climbing robot is given, different prototypes of wall climbing robot are compared, and the different application fields are introduced. A proposed wall climbing robot with permanent magnetic adhesion mechanism for inspecting oil tanks is put forward. The mechanical system architecture is detailed in the paper. By analyzing the robot's workspace, permanent magnetic adhesion mechanism is chosen for the robot. Also, tracked locomotion mechanism is applied to the robot. By static and dynamic force analysis of the robot, design parameters about adhesion and locomotion mechanism are derived. In addition, safety constraints for the robot are obtained. Finally, the electrical system architecture for the robot is offered. To improve the efficiency, hierarchy control architecture is employed in the robot system. An embedded system is used and installed in the robot to manage multiple sensors and to communicate with the master computer through the wireless link. And the Web-based teleoperation for the robot is illustrated in the paper.