|
|
Industrial Projects |
|
Pole climbing robot (Back) |
Air pollution in metropolitan areas causes dirt to accumulate on highway lighting
bulbs. The bulbs should be cleaned on a regular basis in order to maintain the required illumination in the highways without resorting to more power consuming light bulbs.
Manual cleaning of highway lighting bulbs is a dangerous and traffic disturbing
task. To address this problem Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of
the University of Tehran has developed a wheel-based pole climbing robot named University
of Tehran Pole Climbing Robot (UT-PCR).
UT-PCR consists of a climbing platform with two manipulators for washing the lighting
bulbs. The climbing platform itself consists of a triangular body and six limbs
with ordinary wheels at their tips. The three lower wheels are actuated with DC
motors and thrust the robot up the pole. The three upper limbs have passive wheels
and act just to increase the system stability. By its design, UT-PCR has a number
of advantageous features in comparison to existing pole climbing robots:
- Its weight is reduced by being nonholonomic and underactuated, which gives it full
maneuverability with fewer actuators.
- It is a fast moving robot because of using wheels for both grasping and climbing
the pole.
- It is fail-safe because of its auto-locking feature and the fact that the pole always
passes through the robot platform.
- It is capable of climbing stepped poles with circular or near circular cross sections
because of suspension by springs.
- It is capable of climbing nonferrous as well as ferrous poles since it does not
depend on magnetic forces for gripping the surface.
UT Pole Climbing Robot (movie)
|