Climbing Robot For Underwater Cleaning

Abstract

Some designs of the climbing robots (CRs) were developed for cleaning of high rise buildings (Ikeda, Nozaki, Shimada, and Tajima,1989). There are many tasks in the shipping industry and underwater environments, which demand either the carriage of dif· ferent technological equipment along vet1ical or sloping surfaces and the provision for technological operations on such surfaces (Haferkamp, Bach, Ogawa, and Rachkov, 1994). Surface cleaning by automatic equipment is an important application for the CRs in ship maintenance (Gradetsky and Rachkov, 1990). Marine growth on the hull reduces a speed of a ship and increases a fuel consump· tion. It takes a long time, and the toxic and expensive agents to destroy a marine growth in dry dock. The possibilities for use in underwater conditions, and the shorter than conventional processes time required to execute technological operations mean economic efficiency the applications of the CR.