Guide rail design for a passive suction cup based wall-climbing robot

摘要

This paper designs a guide rail for a wall-climbing robot based on passive suction cups. The designed guide rail can guarantee stable climbing of a wall-climbing robot. Firstly, to design the parameters of the guide rail, properties of the utilized passive suction cup are experimentally studied. Then a guide rail is designed to distribute the forces of the attached suction cups. It guarantees that the front attached suction cup of the robot obtains a large enough reaction force from the attached surface. Experimental results show that the robot prototype with the designed guide rail is able to stably climb a surface without falling off, since the front suction cup of the robot prototype can be completely attached to the climbing surface.