Development of a wheeled wall‐climbing robot with an internal corner wall adaptive magnetic adhesion mechanism

Abstract

The wall‐climbing robot is a growing trend for robotized intelligent manufacturing of large and complex components in shipbuilding, petrochemical, and other industries, while several challenges remain to be solved, namely, low payload‐to‐weight ratio, poor surface adaptability, and ineffective traversal maneuverability, especially on noncontinuous surfaces with internal corners (non‐CSIC). This paper designs a high payload‐to‐weight ratio wheeled wall‐climbing robot which can travel non‐CSIC effectively with a payload capacity of up to 75 kg, and it can carry a maximum load of 141.5 kg on a vertical wall. By introducing a semi‐enclosed magnetic adhesion mechanism, the robot preserves a redundant magnetic adsorption ability despite the occurrence of significant gaps between localized body components and the wall surface. In addition, by ingeniously engineering a passive adaptive module into the robot, both the surface adaptability and crossability are enhanced without increasing the gap between the body and the wall, thereby ensuring the optimization of the adsorption force. Considering the payload capacity and diversity when climbing on vertical walls, inclined walls, ceilings, and internal corner transitions, control equations for internal corner transitions and comprehensive simulations of magnetic adsorption forces are performed using FEA tools. Finally, a functional prototype was developed for rigorous experimental testing, with the results confirming that the robot successfully meets the desired functionality and performance benchmarks.