Wall climbing robot using soft robotics

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to develop a lightweight wall climbing robot which is based on the soft-robotics concept. This approach uses the pneumatic system for the locomotion purpose of the robot. The robot is a prototype for inspection applications aboard the pipe inspections both inside and outside the pipe. From recent studies, we came across the pneumatic actuators which actuate when pressurized i.e. when a particular amount of air is pumped in. These actuators can be considered as a single degree of freedom (DOF), as they have just a single bending side. In this project, we have used three such kinds of actuators which act as the 3 (DOF). The robot design and initial experimental results are presented including the stress and strain calculation.