Design, modeling, and manufacturing of a novel robust gripper-based climbing robot: KharazmBot

Abstract

AbstractThere are a lot of high-height structures that should be inspected or manipulated frequently due to maintenance purposes. According to the safety considerations and time or cost limitations, substituting the human operator with an automatic robot is inevitable. The main objective of this paper is to design and manufacture a novel climbing robot equipped with grip-based locomotion system which can climb through scaffold structures and trusses to accomplish inspectional and operational tasks. The proposed robot has good maneuverability and stability. The proposed robot is manufactured in order to verify the simulation results with experimental data. The chassis and its corresponding grippers are designed first, and the corresponding model of the system is extracted. This model is used then for designing the controlling strategy of the system. The path planning of the robot is conducted to realize the climbing process by the robot during several steps in an optimum way. The prototype of the proposed robot is manufactured at Kharazmi University called KharazmBot. Experimental results not only show the capability of the manufactured robot toward ascending the mentioned structures but also prove its high stability as a result of its designed gripper and also its good maneuverability as a result of its over-actuated mechanism. Thus, it is concluded that the designed and manufactured climbing robot of this paper can successfully ascend through the pipes and trusses and perform a desired inspectional or operational task with good accuracy and safety while its stability is also satisfied.