Researchers develop wall-climbing robots

Computerworld - A research organization has developed an electrical adhesive technology that could enable robots to scale walls.

Wall-climbing robots could be a boon for the U.S. military, which could use them on reconnaissance operations or other missions in war zones, said Philip von Guggenberg, director of business development at Menlo Park, Calif.-based SRI International, which created the technology. SRI, a nonprofit, independent research and development organization, has received some funding from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,  the technology research arm of the Pentagon.

Von Guggenberg said that the new electrical adhesive technology, called compliant electroadhesion, provides an electrically controllable way to stick machines to a wall. Since positive and negative charges attract, SRI researchers induce negative charges into the wall being climbed, while at the same time imposing positive charges in the robot, using an on-board battery source.

SRI International's friendly neighborhood wall-crawler.

That adhesion lets the robots, using either feet or tracks, scale a vertical wall. They can even climb walls made of concrete, wood, steel, glass, drywall and brick, even if the surfaces are covered in dust and debris. However, they have a harder time with damp surfaces, von Guggenberg noted. He also added that regular robots, especially those with tracks, can be retrofitted with the technology and turned into wall climbers.

When the charges are shut off, the adhesion ends.

"The government is interested in deploying robots that can climb walls and then create a wireless network or lay sensors to send information back," said von Guggenberg. "The challenge in those [front-line] environments is to deploy things. If you're trying to deploy a wireless network, the range is greater if it's higher up. The alternative is to have a soldier go out and climb a wall to set something up."

Von Guggenberg would not say if the government has made a commitment to use the technology. However, he did say that it will be six to nine months before the technology can be used in the real world.