Development of safety-inspection-purpose wall-climbing robot utilizing aerial drone with lifting function

Abstract

This paper proposes a design of the structural inspection system which is composed of a small and highly maneuverable wall-climbing robot and an aerial drone with a lifting function, mainly focusing in its application on the containment building of nuclear power plants. The wall-climbing robot is lifted to the point of interest on the dome by docking with the drone and detaches from the drone after the attachment to the wall. The localization and relative positioning methods, as well as the cooperation scenario, are proposed for successful cooperation between the robots. To guarantee the stable maneuver of the wall-climbing robot, the critical adhesion force is calculated by static analysis, while shape of the duct is selected to achieve good attachment to the wall. This implementation confirmed the feasibility and capability of the proposed system concept through the wall attachment test. The proposed system can be utilized not only in the nuclear power plants, but also in various environments where inspection of the wall or ceiling is needed, including the bridges or the tunnel, where inspection using conventional wheeled vehicle or inspection performed by human is not feasible or efficient.