Highly adaptable wall-climbing robot enabled by MRE-actuated adsorption mechanism

Abstract Over the past three decades, wall-climbing robots have made significant progress in service missions, greatly expanding the scope of their applications. This paper proposes a new wall-climbing robot capable of climbing vertical walls, walking on ceilings, and adapting to various surfaces. The key feature of this new wall-climbing robot is its innovative adhesive mechanism, which utilizes magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) actuators controlled by magnetic fields. This actuation method offers advantages such as strong adhesion force, high mobility, high adaptability, and quick response, ensuring the safety, stability, and operation efficiency of the robot during climbing. The integrated control board significantly simplifies the control system while enabling effective coordination between mobility and adhesion. To verify and evaluate the advantageous properties of this new wall-climbing robot, both theoretical calculations and experiments were conducted. It is found that the maximum adsorption force increases almost linearly with the sucker diameter, with a step increase of at least 20 N for every 10 mm increase in diameter. Experimental and simulation results also demonstrate that the maximum extra payload increases dramatically with the increasing sucker diameter, showing a 500% growth when the diameter was expanded from 20 mm to 50 mm. A series of demonstrations of the adsorption performance and climbing adaptability were also provided, confirming that this new wall-climbing robot with the MRE actuator has achieved significant accomplishments by overcoming the challenges faced by current wall-climbing robot technology and even surpassing it in terms of surface adaptability, response time, payload, etc.