Climbing robots are useful devices that can be adopted in a variety of applications like maintenance, building, inspection and safety in the process and construction industries.
The main target of the Alicia3 robot is to inspect non porous vertical wall with any regard for the material of the wall. To meet this target, a pneumatic-like adhesion for the system has been selected. Also the system can move over the surface with a suitable velocity by means of two DC motors and overcome some obstacle thanks to a special cup sealing.
This adhesion technology requires a suitable controller to improve system reliability. This is because small obstacles passing under the cup and wall irregularity can vary the value of the internal pressure of the cup putting the robot in some anomalous working conditions. The methodologies used for deriving an accurate system model and controller will be explained and some result will be presented in this work.