Novel omnidirectional climbing robot with adjustable magnetic adsorption mechanism

Abstract

For inspection of large-scale equipment such as storage tanks and spherical tanks, it usually costs much manpower and material, while automated testing robot can achieve fast and accurate detection. Because detection is dependent on specialized automated equipment, it can greatly enhance inspection technology in large storage tanks that applying the Mecanum Omnidirectional Mobile Robot into automated detection. In this paper, a novel Mecanum omnidirectional climbing robot is developed for tanks inspection. Adjustable magnetic adsorption mechanism is mounted on wheels, it can change the position of the magnet in three degrees of freedom and magnetic sizes, to provide a stable and reliable robot adsorption force and adapt to different curvatures of the tank wall. Due to the special working location of the wall climbing robot, it needs to be compensated by the force and speed. The robot is equipped with a gyroscope sensor that can automatically adjust the position and orientation to ensure the smooth movement. Some experiment was conducted and reported.