Detection of Reduced Magnetic Attraction Force Using a Disturbance Observer for Crawler Robots

This paper presents an estimation method for the magnetic attractive force between a crawler robot and a moving surface. The robot has crawlers which have magnets to climb a wall. However, there is a problem that the robot may fall when the magnetic attraction force becomes weak. To solve this problem, we employ a disturbance observer in the control system of the crawler drive motor. The experimental results confirmed that the proposed method can detect the risk of falling due to the decreasing the magnetic attraction force between the crawler robot and the moving surface.

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