W-Climbot: A modular biped wall-climbing robot

Although a large number of wall-climbing robots have been developed in the past decades, most of them suffer from shortcomings such as poor ability to omni-directional locomotion, lower capability to transit between walls and to negotiate obstacles on the walls. To overcome these drawbacks, we have developed a novel biped wall-climbing robot - W-Climbot using modularization method. Consisting of an arm as the main body and two vacuum suckers at the two ends, W-Climbot has great mobility on walls and potential manipulation function. In this paper, the development of W-Climbot is briefly introduced, and then the suction force model for suction module design is presented. The superior ability to transit between walls and to traverse and step over obstacles is analyzed. Experiments are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the system design and to demonstrate basic features of the novel robot.