Development of a safety/support unit for climbing service robots

Abstract Building maintenance tasks are labour-intensive and of a high-risk nature. Workers are often required to carry out the maintenance work, such as wall inspection and cleaning, in mid-air and at high altitudes. In order to enhance the work safety and efficiency, many research projects have been carried out worldwide to investigate the use of climbing service robots for automating these hazardous tasks. As part of each system, most of these service robots do require a safety/support unit to provide an external power source and also a safety mechanism to prevent the robot from falling in the case of accidents. In addition, the safety/support unit is also used as a control console to provide the human operator with a constant communication link with the robot for monitoring and controlling the remote maintenance operations. In order to ensure high reliability and safety of service, it is essential to have a tight integration between the robot and the safety/support system. In this paper, some of the important issues for designing the safety/support unit are discussed. Also, a fuzzy neural technique for controlling the swing and vibration of the safety wire rope is described.