A wheel-leg hybrid wall climbing robot with multi-surface locomotion ability

A prototype of wheel-leg hybrid mobile robot that can move on both ground and wall surfaces is presented, which could be used for special tasks such as rescue, inspection, surveillance and reconnaissance. The wheel-leg hybrid locomotion mechanism enable the robot to achieve quick motion on wall surface, as well as obstacle-spanning on wall surfaces and smooth wall-to-wall transitions. And the wheel lifting mechanism enables the robot to move on both wall surfaces and ground. The robot is composed of a base body and a mechanical leg with 3 DOF. The base body is a big flat suction cup with three-wheeled locomotion mechanism inside, and there is a small flat sucker in the end of the mechanical leg. The new designed chamber seal has simple structure and has steady and reliable performance. A distributed embedded control system is also described which enable the robot operating manually and semi-autonomously in wheeled motion mode or legged motion mode. Kinematics model of the robot is established to analyze the robot´s motion on the wall. And the locomotion gait of the robot is discussed. Experiments show that the robot can adhere on wall surface and realize the basic movements.