Mechatronic Design of a Wall-Climbing Drone for the Inspection of Structures and Infrastructure

The inspection of structures and infrastructure is nowadays a relevant problem in Europe, and especially in Italy, after the recent collapses of bridges. Large research activity has been therefore devoted towards the inspection for further management and maintenance of large areas. For those infrastructures difficult to access UAVs, mobile, and climbing robots are the key solution for carrying instrumentation and sensors. UAVs in most of cases are an efficient solution, but they suffer of some drawbacks, among all the security distance to maintain during the flight operation, avoiding the robot to get next to, or in contact to the surface to inspect. Additionally, when dealing with structures exposed to harsh environmental conditions such as strong wind, the possibility of having collisions between to the robot and the surface is quite high. Therefore, to limit possible crashes to surfaces or walls for indoor and even outdoor inspection, wall-climbing drones have been recently conceived being able to fly next to and climb vertical surfaces. In this paper, we present a novel wall-climbing drone based on a multirotor having legs and passive wheels. First preliminary design simulation is reported together with a built prototype.