A bat-like switched flying and adhesive robot

This paper presents a novel bat-like robot which can fly in air and adhere to various vertical wall surfaces or ceilings with much lower power consumption compared to typical flying robots of comparable physical dimensions. Various aspects in system design are discussed including several kinds of adhesion mechanisms, flying mechanisms, mechanical integration and controller design. The dynamic model of the system is derived and a power consumption optimization method is implemented. Several robot prototypes are presented and experiments were conducted on the robot, which verified the design concepts of the developed robot. The adhesion device is light-weight, highly-efficient, and is able to stick to various surfaces, such as wood, glass, painted wall surface and metal, which are strongly needed by various industries and public security authorities in order to perform dangerous operations such as reconnaissance of high-rise buildings and surveillance applications. The power consumption of the bat-like robot III needed by adhesion device is less than five percent of the power consumed by flying the robot. Consequently, its endurance will be prolonged 20 times than flying robot.