Design and Implementation of a Wire Rope Climbing Robot for Sluices

Abstract

Regular maintenance of wire rope is considered the key to ensuring the safe operation of a sluice gate. Along these lines, in this work, a six-wheeled wire rope climbing robot was proposed, which can carry cleaning and maintenance tools for online cleaning and safety inspection of the sluice wire rope, without its disassembly. The developed climbing robot is composed of separable driving and driven trolleys. It adopts the spring clamping mechanism and the wheeled movement method. Thus, it can easily adapt to the narrow working environment and different diameter ranges of the sluice wire rope. In addition, the designed six-wheeled wire rope climbing robot not only possesses a simple structure, simple control, and stable climbing speed, which are typical characteristics of wheeled climbing robots, but also a large contact area with objects and small wheel deformation, which are typical characteristics of crawler climbing robots. Structural design and mechanical analysis were also carried out, with the fabrication of a prototype robot system called WRR-II. From the acquired experimental results of the prototype’s climbing speed test, load capacity test, climbing adaptability test, and obstacle-negotiation ability test, the rationality and feasibility of the designed climbing robot scheme were verified.