DP-Climb: A Hybrid Adhesion Climbing Robot Design and Analysis for Internal Transition

Abstract

This paper proposes a double propeller wall-climbing robot (DP-Climb) with a hybrid adhesion system based on the biomimetic design principle to address the problems of single adhesion-powered wall climbing robots (WCRs). Such problems include poor maneuverability and adaptability to orthogonal working surfaces with different roughness and flatness, weak flexibility of ground-wall transition motion, and easy stand stilling of transition,. Based on the clinging characteristics of different creatures, the hybrid system combines the rotor units’ reverse thrust, the drive wheels’ driving torque, and the adhesion force offered by the coating material to power the robot through a coupled control strategy. Based on the Newton–Euler equations, the robot’s kinematic characteristics during the ground-wall internal transition motion were analyzed, the safe adhesion conditions were obtained, and a dynamics model of the robot’s ground-wall transition was established. This provided the basis for the coupling control between different power units. Finally, an internal transition PID control strategy based on DP-Climb was proposed. Through mechanical and aerodynamic characteristic experiments, it is verified that the robot’s actual output pulling force can meet the transition motion demand. The experimental results show that the proposed strategy can enable the DP-Climb to complete the ground-wall mutual transition motion smoothly with a speed of 0.12 m/s. The robot’s maximum wall motion speed can reach 0.45 m/s, which verifies that the hybrid adhesion system can flexibly and quickly reach the specified position in a target area flexibly and quickly. The robustness and adaptability of WCR to complex application environments are improved.