Design, modeling and control of a wall climbing robot crossingover obstacles

Recently, wall climbing robots have attracted much attention because of its importance in many applications such as cleaning, painting, fire fighting, tanks and walls inspection. This paper presents the design, modeling and control of a wall climbing robot, crossing over obstacles with heights more than the current ones. The proposed climbing robot consists of two mobile robots connected with a link and two revolute joints. The climbing robot is designed in a way that during crossing over obstacles, one of the mobile robots adheres to the wall while the other mobile robot with its connected link forms a 2 DOF arm crossing over obstacles. An impeller based vacuum is generated giving the adhering capability to each mobile robot. The model of the climbing robot is presented in both stationary and motion modes. A PID-computed torque controller is designed to the 2 DOF arm for crossing over obstacles and the presented simulation results show the validity of the proposed controller.