Design and analysis of anti-overturning mechanism for magnetic wall-climbing robot

Magnetic wall-climbing robots have great potential applications due to their unique characteristics such as large adhesive force and loading capacity. However, they may be likely to overturn or slip when climbing over obstacles on a vertical wall. Conventional solutions usually improve the obstacle-surmounting performance of wall-climbing robots by designing a magnetic adhesive mechanism or using the cooperation of multiple modules, which may increase the weight and influence the loading capacity of the robot. Therefore, the anti-overturning principle of the magnetic wall-climbing robot when climbing over obstacles is investigated analytically, and the schematic structure of the magnetic wall-climbing robot with an anti-overturning mechanism is presented. The mapping relationship of the linkage mechanism parameters and the obstacle-surmounting height is established. Subsequently, linkage mechanism optimization is performed to achieve the maximum obstacle-surmounting height, and the optimal parameters of the linkage mechanism are obtained to ensure the motion stability together with the minimum driving torque. Finally, a research prototype of the magnetic wall-climbing robot with an anti-overturning mechanism is developed, and experiments are conducted to verify the theoretical results and evaluate the obstacle-surmounting performance of the robot.