Development of a wall-climbing aerial Robot using tilt-rotor and an auxiliary arm

Abstract

There are many applications of wall-climbing technology such as SHM (Structural Health Monitoring) of civil structures like bridges and high-rise buildings, cleaning solar panels to improve power generation efficiency, and visual inspection of aircraft. However, the existing wall-climbing technology using magnetic force, suction, pneumatic force, adhesion materials, etc. had limitations for actual field application, given that it could only be applied to specific-types of the wall, its performance was degraded over time, and that safety problem for falling accident was not certain. To overcome these problems, thrust-assisted wall-climbing technology has been developed. The advantage of the technology is that it can be applied regardless of type of wall by relying on friction caused by the actuation of propulsion onto the wall and that there is a relatively low risk of falling accident due to failure of wall-attaching. In addition, drones have their own propulsion systems for flying, which make it easier to apply thrust based wall motion technology and provide easy access to surfaces of structures that are not easily accessible. This paper deals with the concept, design, and development and experiment of thrust-assisted wall-climbing robot using drone platform and studies were conducted to enhance efficiency and stability of the thrust-assisted wall-climbing method by applying tilt mechanism and auxiliary arm.