Abstract: To insure reliable adhesion and agile movernent of the wall climbing robot (WCR) of gapped permanent magnetic adhesion type system on complex curved surface, key problems needed to be solved when the robot runs on such surfaces are analyzed. Then the scheme of WCR applying multi-body flexible adhesion system is put forward. WCR is composed of a wheeled locomotion mechanism and an adhesive system, and the adhesive system is mounted on the chassis of the wheeled locomotion mechanism and non-contact with the wall’s surface. The adhesive system is made up of several separate adhesive devices, each adhesive device is connected to the wheeled locomotion mechanism through a mechanism with 2 rotating degrees of freedom and is partly or fully supported by several omnidirectional free-rolling wheels when running on the wall’s surface, then each adhesive device can adjust its posture relative to the wall’s surface due to the adhesive force. Multi-body dynamics simulation is conducted to design the WCR, the prototypes are manufactured to test the design, and the performance of adhesive system’s self-adaptation to curved surface is optimized. Results of simulation and experiments indicate that the WCR can adapt to the change of curvature and shape of the wall surface automatically, the robot’s performance of adhesion and mobility running on complex spatial curved surfaces is close to corresponding its performance on flat surfaces, which means that the robot is capable of running with large payload and good mobility on complex spatial curved surfaces.

Key words: Complex curved-surface self-adaptation, Permanent magnetic adhesion, Wall climbing robot