Publications by Frédéric Rochat

Tubulo II: magnetic climbing inchworm for inspection of boiler tubes

Francesco Mondada, Hannes Bleuler, Frédéric Rochat, Patrick Schoeneich, Olivier Truong-Dat Nguyen

TUBULO II is a climbing inspection robot with for inner inspection of boiler tubes. Its locomotion principle is the inchworm type. The adhesion is realized with Magnetic Switchable Device [1]. The inner is able to operate within a tube of inner bore diamet ...

World Scientific2011

Cy-mag3D: a simple and miniature climbing robot with advance mobility in ferromagnetic environment

Francesco Mondada, Hannes Bleuler, Roland Moser, Frédéric Rochat, Patrick Schoeneich, Barthélémy Lüthi

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present a novel miniature magnetic climbing robot for industrial inspection. The robot has high mobility with low complexity. ...

2011

Miniature Magnetic Climbing Inspection Robots

Frédéric Rochat

Industrial plants have an abundance of complex and confined areas that require systematic inspection. Maintenance work is necessary to ensure reliability and safety. In many cases, due to either size limitations or high danger, access is impossible to huma ...

EPFL2011

Tremo: an inspection climbing inchworm based on magnetic switchable device

Francesco Mondada, Hannes Bleuler, Frédéric Rochat, Ricardo Daniel Rita Beira

TREMO is a compact magnetic climbing inchworm with the capability to move in complex ferromagnetic environments. The robot fits inside a cylinder of 500 mm in height and 120 mm in diameter for an approximate weight of 800 g. It has a modular configuration ...

World Scientific2011

Climbing robot with thermal glue

Francesco Mondada, Hannes Bleuler, Frédéric Rochat, Thierry Barras, Vitalis Hirschmann

Climbing robots require an adhesion principle in order to overcome gravity. Many physical principles have been used. In this work, the use of thermal glue is proposed. The implementation of miniature thermal glue dispenser is presented with experimental re ...

World Scientific2011

TRIPILLAR: Miniature magnetic caterpillar climbing robot with plane transition ability

Francesco Mondada, Roland Moser, Frédéric Rochat, Patrick Schoeneich, Olivier Truong-Dat Nguyen

We present a miniature magnetic climbing robot with dimensions 96 x 46 x 64mm(3). With two degrees of freedom it is able to climb ferromagnetic surfaces and to make inner plane to plane transitions whatever their inclination is. This robot, named TRIPILLAR ...

Cambridge University Press2011

Cy-mag3De: magnetic climbing inspection robot

Francesco Mondada, Hannes Bleuler, Frédéric Rochat, Patrick Schoeneich, Olivier Marti

Cy-Mag3De is a magnetic climbing inspection robot with advanced mobility. It is based on an innovative, award-winning and patented magnetic design. Its mobility is further enhanced thanks to a novel active tail. The robot has a cylindrical shape of 80 mm i ...

World Scientific2011

Design of Magnetic Switchable Device (MSD) and applications in climbing robot

Francesco Mondada, Hannes Bleuler, Michael Bonani, Stéphane Magnenat, Frédéric Rochat, Patrick Schoeneich

A Magnetic Switchable Device (MSD) is a ferromagnetic circuit using permanent magnets where the flux can circulate between different paths when its configuration is changed. This routes or cancels the flux through specific surfaces, and thus turns on or of ...

World Scientific2010

Magnetic wheels optimization and application to the MagneBike climbing robot

Francesco Mondada, Hannes Bleuler, Fabien Tâche, Frédéric Rochat, Patrick Schoeneich

Magnetic wheels are a powerful solution to design inspection climbing robots with excellent mobility. Magnetic wheels optimization based on simulations and the results that were obtained on prototypes are presented. The measured adhesion was doubled betwee ...

World Scientific2010

Highly Compact Robots for Inspection of Power Plants

Francesco Mondada, Roland Siegwart, Roland Moser, Fabien Tâche, Frédéric Rochat, Gilles Caprari, Patrick Schoeneich, Andreas Breitenmoser

This paper reports on a 3 years applied research project dealing with several inspection scenarios of power plants and resulting in many robot prototypes and 3 main achievements. The project is a common effort between industry and university, including ALS ...

IEEE Press2010