Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

vacuum pads for robotic feet to climb on glass surfaces

Status
Not open for further replies.

roltex_rohit123

New Member
I am helping my friend with her robotics project. we want to make the robot climb glass surface with a load of 5KG. along with its own weight. i was thinking of vacuum pads for this purose, but if there is any other solution, its most welcome. .
 
What about a powerfull magnet and a moveable iron pad on the other side of the glass?
 
What about a powerfull magnet and a moveable iron pad on the other side of the glass?

would do, but We have to give a very Practical design.they have asked to clean the building glasses. But i will keep this one as an option if we are not able to do our vacuum stuff. thanks . if you have any other solution, always welcome
 
Yes Vacum pads are probably best here. You could put a Co2 tank on the bot and use the tank to power a Venturi-Vaccum device(kinda like a compressed gas powered vacum pump).
then you'd also have an air source for if you wanted to use pneumatic power to actually climb the wall. I've been doing pneumatics for longer then i want to admit......

If you do want to use pneumatic power in any way there is a Co2 tank+regulator kit out there for powering tools that is small enough to fit on a belt. and PowerAire.com is a good source for vaccum pads and pumps.

how far does it need to travel? Is it acceptable to have any cabling running down to the ground from the robot? what budget and time frame are you thinking of?
 
Last edited:
Yes Vacum pads are probably best here. You could put a Co2 tank on the bot and use the tank to power a Venturi-Vaccum device(kinda like a compressed gas powered vacum pump).
then you'd also have an air source for if you wanted to use pneumatic power to actually climb the wall. I've been doing pneumatics for longer then i want to admit......

If you do want to use pneumatic power in any way there is a Co2 tank+regulator kit out there for powering tools that is small enough to fit on a belt. and PowerAire.com is a good source for vaccum pads and pumps.

how far does it need to travel? Is it acceptable to have any cabling running down to the ground from the robot? what budget and time frame are you thinking of?

it needs to travel to the third floor. our college building has glass walls. we have to keep theweight minimum, and we can have cables for safety and this has to be done in 6 months.
 
it needs to travel to the third floor. our college building has glass walls. we have to keep theweight minimum, and we can have cables for safety and this has to be done in 6 months.

The insurance cost for an item of that nature would exceed the budget to make it by a factor of well heaps. Just imagine if the bot lost traction and 3 storeys down hit someone on the head.......

It would be far cheaper to learn abseiling to clean windows and hey you might even get paid for doing it.....
 
The insurance cost for an item of that nature would exceed the budget to make it by a factor of well heaps. Just imagine if the bot lost traction and 3 storeys down hit someone on the head.......

It would be far cheaper to learn abseiling to clean windows and hey you might even get paid for doing it.....

I dont think we are going to use it... we have to submit it and college dooes whatever it wants to. So i am least concerned about this stuff. i just have to show it climbing 3 floors through windows and clean their windows. we will also be hanging ropes to control it from the ceiling. so there is no chance of all the 2 methods failing atleast on the day of demo. moreover we will be taking care of all the things beforehand to avoid such accidents.
 
The vacuum venturi idea isn't bad, but I can't imagine it being very efficient. A simple small battery powered vacuum pump attached to the cups seems more plausible to me. Another thing to think of is a simple walking leg system, if you have 6 suction cups firmly mounted to a spider bot and only move one leg at a time you can pop a suction cup off move the leg and then press it back onto the glass, this would be easier to do if you had a vacuum release on each suction cup to avoid having to use too much force to remove each leg. Highly pliable silicon and careful feedback from the motors that drive the legs to 'test' if it's connected to something would allow for something that's as safe as the seal can make it.

One thing that makes this a bad idea is that dirty glass doesn't hold suction very well =) fouling is always a problem with suction cup type devices.
 
This seems like very controlled conditions. i don't think safety is much of a concern here. If there was no cabling running to the ceiling that would be another story.

I was just throwing the venturi idea out there because not much volume is actually needed so efficiency is not an issue with such low volumes. plus as far as i know the efficiency is reasonable with those.

The reason i suggested Pneumatic power is that walking type bots don't use wheels they have legs, and pneumatic pistons are good at strong linear movement.

what sceadwian said about a release valve is a good idea. any solenoid valve will do this pretty well. Poweraire and clippard micromatic both make these in very small sizes.
 
This seems like very controlled conditions. i don't think safety is much of a concern here. If there was no cabling running to the ceiling that would be another story.

I was just throwing the venturi idea out there because not much volume is actually needed so efficiency is not an issue with such low volumes. plus as far as i know the efficiency is reasonable with those.

The reason i suggested Pneumatic power is that walking type bots don't use wheels they have legs, and pneumatic pistons are good at strong linear movement.

what sceadwian said about a release valve is a good idea. any solenoid valve will do this pretty well. Poweraire and clippard micromatic both make these in very small sizes.

i think instead of using a vacuum motor and increasing the power requirement and weight, i could use mechanical cups with a release valve. i have made search on the internet and one product seems good. it has two cups on a single unit and release valve for both of them. now what i plan is to control the release valve through a seperate motor mechanism, and then control the whole leg. how does it sound?
 
how about making a track or wheel with lots of little suckers on it, that way as the wheel turns it will release the suckers behind it at the same time as new suckers stick, by using lots of small suckers you reduce the chances of detaching and falling.

something like this
**broken link removed**
 
That vacuum track idea is neat. Light, simple efficient, and redundant.. But it might be cost prohibitive to get such tracks made. Tracks are expensive enough as it is.

Also, wouldn't you need idlers in the middle to maintain pressure on the middle of the track?? That one in the photo doesn't seem to need them.

EDIT: Upon closer inspection of the photo, the tracks almost look like cut of strips of bathtub mats (those mats with suction cups on the bottom you lay down in a bathtub so you don't slip) lol. Brilliant! and cheap. I'd definately investigate this idea.
 
Last edited:
i think instead of using a vacuum motor and increasing the power requirement and weight, i could use mechanical cups with a release valve. i have made search on the internet and one product seems good. it has two cups on a single unit and release valve for both of them. now what i plan is to control the release valve through a seperate motor mechanism, and then control the whole leg. how does it sound?

hi,
Look at episode #2 in this link to 'Weird Connections' a TV documentary that discovered how Geko's can climb up glass.
Its got nothing to do with suction pads or magnets, they managed to duplicate the Geko method.

Very interesting TV program.

**broken link removed**

Video link:
**broken link removed**

part2:
**broken link removed**
 
Last edited:
I'm still freakin out about the ingenuity of using cut strips of bathtub mats to make the suction cup tracks.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top