Wall climbing robot: model design, logic control and model simulation
Date
2019-04
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Ashesi University
Abstract
Industrial accidents are on the rise. This fact is even more prevalent in developing countries
where the countries lack the safety standards required to ensure workplace safety in the pursuit
of economic development. As land in prime locations becomes increasingly scarce, there is an
argument for building skyscrapers. But this just creates a new workforce that are subject to the
horrific dangers of cleaning glass panels at heights well above the ground.
In this applied project, I designed a robot, Wall-C to take the pain of climbing to unfavourable
heights and undertaking the incredibly dangerous tasks of cleaning sky-scrappers. Wall-C is a
simple and affordable robot that works via linear actuation and vacuum pressure. Using a path
planning algorithm that I designed and implemented, the robot climbs the glass wall, traverses
the entire surface area with its wipers and descends once the glass is clean.
Testing of Wall-C was two-fold. First, FEA analysis was performed on Wall-C and this revealed
an entirely stable frame with a factor of safety of 8. The second assessment, a cleaning
efficiency test, proved the robot could clean at a rate of 1731𝑚𝑚%/s (or 6.228𝑚%/h).
Description
Capstone Project submitted to the Department of Engineering, Ashesi University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering, April 2019
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Capstone project
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Keywords
Industrial accidents, workplace safety, Wall-C, robotics, external building cleaning