Steel structures require inspection, maintenance, and repair tasks to ensure their proper functioning, stability, structural integrity, longevity, and aesthetic quality. Such structures are present in numerous constructions such as bridges, ports, airports, telecommunications towers, stadiums, power lines, power plants, and industrial plants, as well as forming part of the framework of most buildings. Typically, the maintenance tasks for these vertical structures are performed by human operators who must climb the structures to carry out these tasks, subjecting them to serious risks, including falling from considerable heights or electrocution. To avoid exposing human operators to such risks, for the past couple of decades, numerous researchers worldwide have been studying the possibility of using climbing robots to perform these dangerous tasks at height.

The main objective we propose in this project is to develop a new articulated climbing robot for the exploration and maintenance of vertical steel structures, with the ability to move in three-dimensional space. The main innovation of the robot to be developed in this project, compared to other climbing robots developed to date, is that the proposed robot will have binary actuation (all-or-nothing actuators), which greatly simplifies the planning and control of its movements. Additionally, the robot to be developed will have a moderately high degree of kinematic redundancy (between 10 and 12 degrees of freedom), allowing it to enjoy sufficiently high mobility to explore three-dimensional structures despite having only binary actuators. In this way, by combining binary actuation and kinematic redundancy, we aim to achieve a balance between simplicity and freedom of movement, thereby addressing the main complexity issues that currently prevent climbing robots from being used more extensively.