CREST: A low energy consumption wall climbing robot with passive impactive negative pressure adhesion

Abstract

Wall-climbing robot (WCR) displays a great potential in a wide range of tasks that are challenging or dangerous for human presence. Adhesion capacity and control mechanism are the key factors for climbing robots, as they directly affect the robot’s durability and power consumption in different climbing tasks. However, many WCRs adopting negative pressure adhesion rely on extra mechanism such as air compressor to achieve engagement and disengagement while overlooking the dimension and energy-consumption level of the robot. The high power consumption significantly reduces the robot’s operation duration and efficiency. To address this issue, we proposed a passive negative pressure adhesion mechanism together with an energy-efficient disengagement mechanism using the servo-string-plug sealing system that eliminates the requirement of air compressor or vacuum pump. We developed a compact bipedal climbing prototype named CREST (Climbing Robot with Efficient Suction Technology) that validated this design. Experiment showed that the CREST can perform climbing tasks in different environments including vertical surfaces and can transit between perpendicular planes with low power consumptions. It had a payload capacity up to 0.7 kg when attaching using one foot, the efficient payload capacity achieved 40 times the mass of the foot.