Design of a teleoperated wall climbing robot for oil tank inspection

This paper presents a climbing robot with wheeled locomotion which uses permanent magnets as adhesion mechanism. The robot designed is intended for the inspection of various types of ferromagnetic structures, such as ship hulls, wind turbine towers, bridges, and fuel tanks, in order to detect surface faults or cracks caused by, for example aging or atmospheric corrosion. The proposed robotic system consists of a cordless teleoperated mobile platform which can move on vertical ferromagnetic walls. The robot can be equipped with the various testing probes and cameras that are necessary for different inspection tasks. First, different prototypes of magnetic wall climbing robots are analyzed in order to establish the current state-of-the-art, and to provide the background required to analyse the main advantages and drawbacks of the prototypes presented. The design of the proposed robotic system is then explained, and details are provided of the new approach for the design of the permanent magnetic adhesion mechanism. Finally the mechanical and electrical construction, the control architecture implemented, and the human-machine interface for its control and teleoperation are presented too.