Design and analysis of a climbing robot for weld detection

Abstract The climbing robot is gradually applied to the safety weld detection on large metal walls avoid manual operation. However, most robots are difficult perform efficient operations for poor performance obstacle overcoming, flexible turning and motion stability. This paper presents a robot, which integrates contact permanent magnet adsorption units crawler chain mobile mechanism obtain continuous, stable walls. By establishing mechanical model, minimum force can be calculated considering instability conditions such as sliding, longitudinal overturning lateral overturning. Combined with Ansys Maxwell simulation, structure was optimized structural size of single unit. Experimental results show achieve accurate welds, maximum load reach 15.6 kg, meets engineering application requirements