Development of a drone-type wall-sticking and climbing robot

Abstract

Urban structures need constant maintenance and inspection of the structural health condition and safety of the users, however, to access the structure is getting harder and harder due to their enormous height and size. In order to deal with this problem, though many researchers have developed several robots for wall-climbing there is no guaranteed solution yet. One of the critical reasons why existing wall-climbing robots haven't been available in the field is the risk of accidental fall due to operational failure from the harsh environment like strong wind and surface's unpredictable condition. Therefore, we tried to develop a drone-type wall-climbing aerial robot platform that can approach to any place of the structure by flying and sticking to the target place with pose change and perching mechanism. The robot is equipped with a locomotion mechanism like other wall-climbing robots to move on the vertical surface of the structure. This paper deals with installing the wall-climbing mechanism on the aerial robot, its pose change and wall sticking mechanism, and locomotion on the vertical surface of an urban structure.