Scientists have created a new type of drone that can climb walls. The drone can approach any type of structure first by flying up and then sticking to the side of it.
Buildings, bridges and other large structures are aging in this day in age. Because of this aging, there is the potential for collapse in the future. That's why monitoring these structures in important. While there's been a lot of research on the inspection of inaccessible, large structures using robots, there are very few robots that can tackle all structures due to their diverse surface shapes.
The new drone is called CAROS, which stands for Climbing Aerial RObot System. This robot not only has the ability to fly but also can climb walls. This means that it can potentially fly up to a structure and then land sideways on it when wind conditions are rougher than normal.
Because the robot can stick to the surface of infrastructure, the drone can, theoretically, perform close inspection and possibly even maintenance.
Creating the robot wasn't simple, though. The researchers designed and analyzed the structure and mechanism of the drone in order to maximize its stability while flying and also maximize its grip on walls. The researchers also developed algorithms for when the drone transfers from flying to climbing after meeting a wall.
That's not all the researchers installed in CAROS, though. They also created an autonomous navigation algorithm with the help of sensory information to recognize 3-D environments. This allows the robot to navigate an environment without having a human controller be part of every single step of the process.
While CAROS is useful for dealing with infrastructure, it's also inspired the creation of another robot called FAROS (Fireproof Aerial RObot System) that can help with fires in high-rise buildings.
CAROS could be important when it comes to upkeep and maintenance on bridges and other hard-to-reach locations in the future. Not only that, but it could also perform routine inspections to show what parts of a building or bridge needs some extra care.
The findings were presented at the International Conference on Control, Automation and Systems (ICCAS) 2015.
