While many fear robots might take over humans and their jobs, they have actually been making our lives so much easier -- whether it's helping build cars, or helping in conducting intricate surgeries that save people¡¯s lives.?
And now, The College of Engineering Trivandrum has created a unique robot that can climb walls.?
The robot is making use of a duct-fan mechanism to climb on the walls and is designed to look for cracks and damage to concrete walls -- something that would otherwise require a human to climb using harnesses, risking his/her life while doing so.?
The students who have developed this cool wall climbing robot claim that compared to existing technology for wall climbing mechanisms, this robot is not only faster but also possesses better load-bearing capacity thus making it easier for the vehicle to stay on the wall for longer. The college has secured a patent for this creation.?
Praveen Sekhar, one of the students of the team that developed the prototype, explained in a statement to ANI, ¡°The inspection work of huge concrete structures can be made faster and accurate using this wireless wall climbing robot instead of the tedious way for workers reaching there to inspect.¡±
Sekhar claims that the robot has a range of over a kilometre, thus allowing the robot to climb as high as it wants without fearing the loss of connectivity. Moreover, the robot is also capable of simply recording what it saw and returning back to the starting point.?
Sekhar added, ¡°This was done as part of a final year engineering project in 2014. In 2013-14, one of the social causes bothering us was the stability of Mullaperiyar Dam. There were no low-cost mechanisms available to inspect the surface of the dam for cracks developed or other damages. This gave us an idea to create something which can be used to the climb the walls of the dam and captured images on a regular basis which can be processed to keep a check on the dam and also for proper reporting of its stability.¡±