City Climber: a new generation of mobile robot with wall-climbing capability

摘要

This paper introduces a new generation wall-climbing robots named as City-climber, which has the capabilities to climb walls, walk on ceilings, and transit between different surfaces. Unlike the traditional wall-climbing robots, the Cityclimber robots use aerodynamic attraction which achieves good balance between strong adhesion force and high mobility. Since the City-climber robots don't require perfect sealing as the vacuum suction technique does, the robots can move on virtually any kinds of smooth or rough surfaces. The other novelties of the City-climber robots are the modular design and high-performance on-board processing unit. The former feature achieves booth fast motion of each module on planar surfaces and smooth transition between the surfaces by a set of two modules. The latter feature makes the real-time signal processing and autonomous operation possible. We envision that the City-climber robots be used in urban environments for search and rescue, weapon/tool delivery, inspection and surveillance purposes. To increase the hardware and software reconfigurability, the self-contained City-climber robots use system-on-programmable-chip (SoPC) technology for on-board perception and motion control. The video display several versions of the City-Climber prototypes, illustrating the main areas of functionality and results of several key experimental tests, including 4.2kg payload, operation on rough surfaces, locomotion over surface gaps, and inverted operation on ceiling, to name a few.