© 2016, IRJET | Impact Factor value: 4.45 | ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal | Page 745 Design and development of pneumatic suction based wall climbing robot for multiple applications Santosh S.Gudi 1 , K. Bhat 2 1 Student, Department of Instrumentation Technology, Basaveshwar Engineering College, Bagalkot – 587102, Karnataka, India-587102 2 Faculty, Department of Electronics & Instrumentation Engineering, Basaveshwar Engineering College, Bagalkot – 587012, Karnataka, India-587102 ---------------------------------------------------------------------***--------------------------------------------------------------------- Abstract - Robots are quickly moving from industrial domain to service field. The design and development of robot depends on the application for which it is intended for. This paper discusses the design of pneumatic suction mechanism based vertical surface climbing robot. This robot is suitable for inspection of concrete walls, accessing of underside of bridges, reactor pressure vessel inspection, cleaning tall buildings, and many such applications where the robot must be autonomously functioning. Suction cup mechanism has superior performance due to greater gripping capability which ensures more payload and task specific tool carriage. Typical adhesion force and payload calculations are also discussed in this paper. Key Words: Suction mechanism, Double acting cylinder, Solenoid valves 1. INTRODUCTION Robotics is one of the fascinating technologies, which has world wide applications. There are many different reasons for using a robot but the central reason for most applications is to eliminate a human operator. They can work longer than humans and do the task repeatedly without fatigue. Potential application are quite numerous and may vary from replacing human in repetitive or heavy task or work in unsafe and/or contaminated sites. Wall climbing robots are intended for motion on vertical and sloping surfaces in complex and extreme conditions. These robots have the potential to provide revolutionary steps in doing dangerous tasks that are usually performed by humans. Wall-climbing robots are helpful systems for various applications on vertical surfaces. There are a variety of potential applications of robotics for climbing operations that increase efficiency and safety. These include inspection of concrete walls, to access of underside of bridges, reactor pressure vessel inspection and cleaning tall buildings which are difficult to be performed by humans. Recently, there have been many demands for automatic cleaning system on outside surface of buildings such as window glass by increasing of modern architectures. Some customized window cleaning machines have already been installed into the practical use in the field of building maintenance. However, almost of them are mounted on the building from the beginning and they need very expensive initial and maintenance cost. Therefore, requirements for small, light weight and portable window cleaning robot are also growing in the field of building maintenance. The prospect of climbing robots is coveted because they can take the place of humans to carry out hazardous and maintenance job such as cleaning glass surfaces of skyscrapers, fire rescue, and inspectionof high pipes and wall, cleaning and inspection of high rise buildings, evaluation and diagnosis of a storage tank in nuclear power plants and petrochemical facilities, maintenance of ship, aluminum aircraft wing inspection with the consideration of operational efficiency, safety and human health. Due to the ability to relieve human beings from these hazardous works, more and more people are interested in developing various service climbing robots in recent years. Based on a classification of different types of climbing machines examples of robots are presented, which are typically developed for industrial and commercial use. Considering the application environment the system requirements of climbing robots will be presented. A climbing robot used for the inspection of concrete bridges is presented as an example with a huge commercial potential [1], [2]. The robot carries on board sensors which are used for inspection of the nuclear power plants where human are restricted [3]. For micro-scale application the size of the robot scaled down. The macro-scale robot is also used in space for repair, cleaning, inspection and surveillance [4]. The robot has to adapt to unevenness surface of motion which payload to be carried on porous and rough surfaces [5]. The most common attachment principle is the vacuum adhesion, where the robot carries an onboard pump to create a vacuum inside the cups, which are pressed against the wall. This system enables the robots to adhere on any type of material, with low energy consumption. But vacuum adhesion is suitable for usage on smooth surfaces, because the roughness can lead to a leakage in the vacuum chamber such as suction cup. The force in the normal direction when a suction cup adheres to surfaces is measured and compared for dry and respectively wet conditions [6]. Due to International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395 -0056 Volume: 03 Issue: 07 | July-2016 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072