A wall-climbing robot with gecko features

Abstract

Geckos have an excellent locomotion ability on vertical wall surface. In this paper, a climbing robot with four magnetic tracks based on gecko-inspired method is presented. This robot can be used for inspecting and maintaining high conical towers in wind power stations. The configuration technical approach of the robot mechanical structure is given in bionics, and the stability when the robot stays on the tower wall in portrait orientation and landscape orientation is analyzed in detail. With the tracks and the redundant joints, the robot can adapt to the conical curved surface. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the design approach is simulated, and the experiment for the robot mobility and stability is verified in practical cases.