DP-Climb: A Hybrid Adhesion Climbing Robot Design and Analysis for Internal Transition

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Author,

The manuscript entitled: [DP-Climb: A Hybrid Adhesion Climbing Robot Design and Analysis for Internal Transition] by Zhang et al. has now been completed. Based on my review, I must inform you that mentioned paper must be revised. Hence, this paper in its current form is not recommended to be published in machines Journal

The list of references seems to be good and new. The authors provide a comprehensive literature survey and update the list of references.

1-The language used can be improved completely.

2- There are a few typos and formulas in the text that need to be corrected.

3-The geometrical parameters of figure 2 (a very important figure) are not well and clearly explained. For example, alpha 2 is not on the shape of the pump; what is the angle. Also, the red vectors on the figure are not explained in the text at all.

4- in line 179: the author state that “DP-Climb needs to ensure that 100°≤ α10 ≤130° during the transition process” on what basis and reason has this been stated?

5- In Figure 3, there is no coordination between the parameters in the figure and the description in the text. For example, it is said in the text that “T2, T3 are the driving torque of the left and right rear wheels,” while there is nothing clear on the figure. On the other hand, there is W in a figure that is not introduced or mentioned in the text.

Yours sincerely,

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This work introduces a reverse thrust WCR with hybrid adhesion design. The major claims are overall well sited on the experiment data. Some minor revisions are suggested before acceptance, 

1. Give a clear definition of "hybrid" in the abstract as it appears in the title and helps highlight a major novelty in this study e.g., hybrid means a combination of two symmetrical rotor units and two rear drive wheels...

2. Figure 1 should be enlarged and divided into a, b, c, each corresponding to a biomimetic concept discussed in the paragraph above the figure. 

3. The device in Figure 1 looks the same one with a previous publication "Design and Stability Analysis of a Wall-Climbing Robot Using Propulsive Force of Propeller". The author should explicitly explain the difference.  

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Congratulation for your novel hybrid  adhesion system for wall-climbing robots and its underlying transition control strategy. The problem of negative pressure and vacuum wall climbing mechanisms is already addressed in various publications. Most of them focus on the adaptability of wall climbing mechanisms to working surfaces with different roughness and flatness and  flexibility the of ground-wall transition motion, which is indeed not yet really solved. You rely on double propeller wall-climbing robot mechanism with a hybrid adhesion system and its control which is plausible. Your proposed  ground-wall transition motion with its underlying kinematics and dynamics is impressive and shows some novelites. The approach to apply Newton-Euler dynamics coupled with aerodynamics is reasonable. What about your computational complexity and the overall control structure? Do you apply planners?   The achieved ground-wall transition motion  with speed of 0.12 m/s, and the robot's wall motion speed with 0.25 m/s is rather slow.   Do you need stronger propellers and wheel drives or better control methods for coupling both systems?

The study of the wheel surface material and its profile is interesting as well as the coupling of the aerodynamics. 

Your paper is well written, showing clearly the achieved novelties. However, a block diagram with all involved controllers and the information flow as well as the sampling rate and cycle time of the controller should be added.

The figures 1 - 7 are too small, difficultly to interprete, and you should enlarge them. A comparison with related work would enhance the quality of your paper.

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

The paper has as a starting point type of wall climbing robots. Sections 1 present in detail the particularities, the operating principles of the wall climbing robots.

The aspects related to the adhesion systems are presented rigorously.

However, the Design of DP-Climb hybrid adhesion system showed in figure 1 is insufficiently described or represented. It is incomplete. The mechanical parts are not represented or described. The figure is too small.

The mathematical model is well founded and adequate to this type of robots. It would be good if the author would present more advantages for this innovative system.

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors

Thanks for the better editing of the article and thus improving the display of the article results.

Yours Sincerely

Author Response

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