Flying Robot will now clean glass curtain walls of skyscrapers

Beijing, Nov 11: What if the robots that we see in some scientific movies that climbs walls becomes our household material.

Yes! You read it right.

Recently, a Chinese researchers at the Shenyang Institute of Automation (SIA) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have designed a novel flying robot that can not only climbs walls but it is also capable of avoiding obstacles and even jumping over grooves on wall surfaces.

Most interesting thing is that this robot can also conduct interactive operations while in flight to clean glass curtain walls in high-rise buildings.

Generally, regular inspection of high-rise buildings with glass curtain walls has been conducted by humans so far that is dangerous. This new robot can prove to be boon for them the robot represents a major advance in safety and efficiency.

Apart from, jumping over grooves on wall surfaces the robot has been designed so that the whole system's contact force can be controlled precisely without any force sensors. It comprises a single-degree-of-freedom manipulator cube-frame end effector and a hex-rotor UAV system.

"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.

MENG Xiangdong, the robot's designer said, "How to control the force is considered the most difficult problem, since flying robots usually are sensitive to external force."

MENG further added that realizing this objective required first making a flying robot with closed loop control behave like a regular spring system. He said that the elastic coefficient could then be easily changed by altering the control parameters. Which meant that the robot can be taken so that the contact process can be safe enough.

For testing it's function, the research team performed an experiment with the system. For example, the researchers fixed a light switch to a wall, then had the robot press the switch to turn the light on and off. The robot was able to safely and smoothly operate the switch via precise force control.