Sumitomo Develops Steel Wall Climbing Robots for Industrial Use

Shinagawa City Tokyo headquartered Sumitomo Heavy Industries has developed a novel robot capable of traveling over curved steel walls by magnetic adhesion. The achievement is part of a robot development project at Technology Research Center. In this project, Sumitomo invented a novel spherical wheel containing a magnet that can be rotated around two axes. Using this design, Sumitomo have developed a robot that can adapt and travel over curved surfaces that were not possible with conventional robots. In addition to traveling over curved walls, the new robot can also easily attach and detach from walls by changing the magnetic force direction and climb over corners without the need of any complicated controls. At present, Sumitomo is developing practical applications of the robot in inspection, cutting, and arc welding at manufacturing sites.In manufacturing of large steel structures, tasks such as welding at heights and on curved surfaces are difficult to automate and require advanced skills. The newly developed robot can be used for such tasks and is expected to reduce the physical burden on workers, thereby creating safer and smarter next generation manufacturing sites.Wheeled robots with magnetic adhesion are well known in manufacturing and maintenance of large steel structures like ships and industrial facilities. Most conventional wall climbing robots are designed for flat surfaces. To adapt such robots to curved surfaces, it is necessary to either make the robot smaller than the curvature of the surface, or design the robot to fit a particular surface shape and traveling direction. This means that these robots are limited in the range of surfaces they can travel on, the tasks they can perform, and the types of tools they can mount.

Sumitomo Develops Steel Wall Climbing Robots for Industrial Use

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