Flying robot designed to clean glass curtain walls of skyscrapers

Chinese researchers have designed a flying robot which can inspect and maintain glass curtain walls of high-rise buildings with the capability of avoiding obstacles. Researchers at the Shenyang Institute of Automation (SIA) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences were looking for an alternative as the repair and maintenance of skyscrapers became more difficult.

A shift from the traditional gondola systems

The new system marks a paradigm shift in the regular inspection of high-rise buildings which was conducted by humans with gondola systems. The traditional system can be very dangerous, costly and inefficient. The newly designed robot comprises a single-degree-of-freedom manipulator cube-frame end effector and a hex-rotor UAV system which represents a major advance in safety and efficiency. The flying robot can jump over grooves on wall surfaces and can also conduct interactive operations while in flight.

"In the near future, we might see an extensive use of this new system in large infrastructure maintenance, and other special applications, such as scientific sampling,” said MENG Xiangdong, the robot’s designer. 

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Controlling the system's contact force

Recently, the researchers presented the findings of the development of a contact aerial manipulator system that shows high flexibility and strong mission adaptability, at an international conference on robotics and intelligent systems in Macao. The contact aerial manipulator system has been designed in such a way that the whole system’s contact force can be controlled precisely without any force sensors.

"How to control the force is considered the most difficult problem, since flying robots usually are sensitive to external force,” said Xiangdong.

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Successful experiments

The team conducted experiments to test the system where the robot was made to press a light switch on and off. It turned out to be a successful experiment as the robot was able to safely and smoothly operate the switch via precise force control. The robot was also able to write “SIA” on the glass wall with the help of a pen attached to the end of the aerial manipulator.

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