Triz Application in Development of Climbing Robots

Paper is devoted to consideration of the practical application of the Algorithm of Inventive Problem Solving (ARIZ) during the development process of the robot adaptive vacuum feet. Also TRIZ technology evolution trends have been used for development of the new structures of the autonomous climbing robot. These robots are being used for cleaning, finishing and diagnostics of arbitrarily oriented surfaces in space for instance shop windows, glass vestibules, nuclear reactor walls and oil tank surfaces. The new designs of the vacuum adaptive feet and climbing robots have been developed with the aid of applied ARIZ and other TRIZ tools. The specific schemes and designs of vacuum adaptive feet and robots are described. The new vacuum feet can operate on many different surfaces including uneven and cracked ones. This paper has been illustrated with the pictures of real robots and their performances. The outcome of this project was 20 patents with the application of some of them in the current robot’s design. This paper is useful for TRIZ users who like a real case study with measured results and demonstrate how TRIZ was used to develop the solutions.