Low-pressure air motor for wall-climbing robot actuation

A low-pressure rotary-type air motor is suitable to use for a wall-climbing robot, as it has good performances and lightweight and so on. The prototype of the low-pressure air motor has been developed in Miyazaki University, Japan. It is mainly composed of a pair of impellers and the corresponding casings, a switching valve and a shaft. The two impeller-casing pairs are designed to drive the motor shaft to turn in opposite directions. The input airflow is derived with the switching valve to drive one of the two impellers, and thus by alternating the valve position the rotational direction of the air motor shaft can be reversed. This paper presents the mechanism, the static and dynamic characteristics of the air motor, as well as the velocity and position controls in actuating systems. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.