Requirements of glass cleaning and development of climbing robot systems

Cleaning the outer walls of high-rise buildings is always dangerous and laborious work in mid-air. An alternative solution is to use walking-climbing robots which overcome the above-mentioned problems. Wall cleaning and maintenance of high-rise buildings is becoming one of the most appropriate fields for robotization due to its current low level of automation and lack of uniform building structure. In this paper, a family of sky cleaner robots for this difficult job which are totally actuated by pneumatic cylinders and sucked to the glass walls with vacuum suckers are presented. Firstly the basic functions for glass wall cleaning robot are summarized systemically. The individual robots' mechanical constructions and unique aspects are introduced in details. In the end a summary of the main special features of the three kinds of cleaning robots are given.