Development of a Climbing Robot for Inspection of Bridge Cable

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a cable climbing robot which can climb up and down the cables in the bridges. The robot mechanism consists of three parts: a wheel based driving mechanism, adhesion mechanism, and safe landing mechanism. The wheel based driving mechanism is driven by tooth clutches and motors. The adhesion mechanism plays the role of maintaining adhesion force by a combination of pantograph, ball screw, and springs even when the power is lost. The safe landing mechanism is developed for guaranteeing the safety of the robot during operations on cables. It can make the robot fall down with reduced speed by dissipating the gravitational forces. The robot mechanism is designed and manufactured for validating its effectiveness.