Permanent magnetic system design for the wall-climbing robot

Abstract

This paper presents the design of the permanent magnetic system for the wall climbing robot with permanent magnetic tracks. A proposed wall climbing robot with permanent magnetic adhesion mechanism for inspecting the oil tanks is briefly put forward, including the mechanical system architecture. The permanent magnetic adhesion mechanism and the tracked locomotion mechanism are employed in the robot system. By static and dynamic force analysis of the robot, design parameters about adhesion mechanism are derived. Two types of the structures of the permanent magnetic units are given in the paper. The analysis of those two types of structure is also detailed. Finally, two wall climbing robots equipped with those two different magnetic systems are discussed and the experiments are included in the paper. © 2005 IEEE.