Development of Wall-Climbing Robot Using Vortex Suction Unit and Its Evaluation on Walls with Various Surface Conditions

This paper presents a wall-climbing robot called Vortexbot, which has a suction unit that uses vortex flow to generate a suction force. Unlike the traditional unit based on contact-type adsorption, the suction unit does not touch the wall surface, which greatly reduces the frictional resistance between the robot and wall and improves the passing ability of the robot. It first introduces the principle of the vortex suction unit. Then, the authors design the mechanical structure of Vortexbot. Furthermore, they survey the suction properties of the suction unit on a smooth wall surface. In addition, they study the effect of the roughness and shape (a raised obstacle and groove) of the wall surface on the suction performance of the suction unit. Finally, they experimentally verify the climbing performance of Vortexbot on several kinds of walls with different surface conditions.