Proposition of Reconfigurable Wall Climbing Robot Using 6DOF Force Torque Sensor Based on Flexible Structure for Real Environment

Abstract

For the decommissioning the inaccessible area of human workers, the need to develop a wall-climbing robot is increasing. In these robots, high mobility and stability on the surface of the walls are the most important required features. To achieve both these features, a new type of arm equipped with reconfigurable multi modules for a wall climbing robot named Gunryu III was proposed in this paper. The stability and high mobility of the robot can be achieved by reconfiguration, using the attached arm as a connection mechanism and a magnetic adsorption device to the steel surface. One of the important features of the re-configurable wall-climbing robot Gunryu III is the ability to transfer between different surfaces, such as a ceiling, wall and ground, and the transfer motion was performed based on only position based control without using force torque sensor. However, in case of real target environment, only position based control of the wall climbing is not suitable method in real conditions. By this reason, the necessity of additional force torque sensor can be easily expected. In this paper, firstly, the developed wall-climbing robot Gunryu III was explained and the basic wall-climbing motion was confirmed by simple experiments, and secondly, the concept of suitable force toque sensor for real environment was discussed.