CCRobot-V: A Silkworm-Like Cooperative Cable-Climbing Robotic System for Cable Inspection and Maintenance

This paper presents CCRobot-V, the fifth version of CCRobot, a cooperative serial multi-robot system for bridge cable inspection and maintenance that uses silkworm-like locomotion to climb the entire length of super-long stay cable at high speeds while carrying heavy inspection/maintenance equipment. CCRobot-V consists of one climbing precursor robot, one inspection/maintenance robot, several cable-carrying robots, and a power-tethered cable guiding system. The pre-cursor robot is the “head,” which leads the affiliated sub-robots along the bridge cable. Every sub-robot possesses a pair of self-locking palms. When a sub-robot grips on the bridge cable with its palms, it becomes a fixed anchor point that allows the adjacent sub-robots in front and back to use winches and steel wires to pull themselves upward. With this cooperative multi-robot system, cable inspection/maintenance tasks can be divided into several functional units, with each inspection/maintenance equipment installed separately on a customized sub-robot. Thus, CCRobot-V provides a complete mobile inspection/maintenance work line for a bridge cable. The experimental and field tests demonstrate CCRobot-V's high climbing speed, high payload capacity, and full-length cable moving capability. It has the potential application value for the actual bridge cable inspection/maintenance.