Performance Comparison of Adaptive Mechanisms of Cleaning Module to Overcome Step-Shaped Obstacles on Façades

Abstract

As the demand and market for building maintenance are increasing, automated building façade cleaning has become essential. Robots are replacing human workers because cleaning work on high-rise buildings using gondolas can be dangerous. Several façade cleaning robots have been developed for climbing, and practical knowledge to clean the façade is being adopted in their cleaning devices. In this study, a passive linkage suspension mechanism and tri-star wheels are applied to solve the problems of unclean zones due to failures during overcoming obstacles and the problems through the use of additional actuators. Various mechanism models have been introduced and their performances have been compared based on dynamic simulation considering obstacle encounters.