INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRECISION ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING Vol. 10, No. 4, pp.

143-146 OCTOBER 2009 / 143

DOI 10.1007/s12541-009-0082-4

A Novel Design of Permanent Magnet Wheel

with Induction Pin for Mobile Robot
Seung-Chul Han1, Jinho Kim2,# and Hwa-Cho Yi2
1 School of Automobile Engineering, Yeungnam College of Science & Technology, Daegu, South Korea, 705-703
2 School of Mechanical Engineering, Yeungnam University, Gyeongsan, Gyeongbuk, South Korea, 712-749
# Corresponding Author / E-mail: jinho@ynu.ac.kr, TEL: +82-53-810-2441, FAX: +82-53-810-4627

KEYWORDS: Attaching force, Finite element analysis, Induction pin, Mobile robot, Permanent magnet, Wheel

Robots are utilized to automate works on a vertical plane of a large structure such as a ship and permanent
magnet wheels have been utilized to make possible the robots to be attached to vertical plane and be in motion. In
this paper, we propose a new design of the permanent magnet wheel for mobile robots to improve the adhesive
force and facilitate the detachment of the wheel. In newly suggested design, the magnetic flux enhances the
adhesive force during the attachment while induction pins redirect magnetic flux in order to achieve an easier
detachment. To characterize the performance, finite element analysis is executed and experiment apparatus is
constructed. The results show that the adhesive force is reduced effectively by using induction pins.

Manuscript received: May 13, 2008 / Accepted: June 22, 2009

1. Introduction
In order to produce a large structure such a ship, we need safety
equipments for working on inclined or vertical plane which results
in excessive hours and costs. Thus, researchers had been developing
several devices enabling mobile robots to operate on inclined or
vertical walls. To attach the wall-climbing robots on the wall,
suction types had been widely used. Luk et al. developed a 4-legged
articular “Nuro robot”, whose legs and body had suction cups and
Bahr et. al. measured attaching force of suction cup on horizontal
and vertical walls.1-3 Wang et al. introduced new suction plates with
improved efficiency and tolerance loads.4 Also, Nishi reported
various types of suction cups.5 These types can be utilized
regardless of the materials of walls. Furthermore, they have good
attaching force-weight ratio and the attaching force can be easily
controlled. The fast motion of the robots, however, cannot be
obtained when suction cups are adhered on the wall. In addition,
supplementary devices are required to adhere and control the
suction cups. On the other hand, Hirose introduced a robot named as
“Disk Rover”.6 It has inclined magnetic disks attached and rotated
on the wall which produces driving force to move forward.
Furthermore, Lee et. al. developed a magnet-wheel robot to inspect
cracks in the coolant pathway of nuclear reactor and Schempf
developed an endless track type to inspect the inside of a storage
tank.7,8 Zhang et. al. investigated the effect of magnetic strength of
three-dimensional arranged barrel machine on polishing
characteristics and saitov built the effective map using a wave
algorithm in multi-robot system.9,10 Lim et. al. proposed a new
driving mechanism to allow a rescue robot to climb stairs.11
This paper aims to introduce a new design of permanent magnet
wheel to obtain effective movement and detachment of permanent
magnetic wheel for mobile robot application. In newly suggested
design, the magnetic flux enhances the adhesive force during the
attachment while induction pins redirect magnetic flux in order to
achieve an easier detachment. 3-D finite element analysis (FEA) is
performed utilizing commercial FE software “MAXWELL” and the
experiment apparatus is constructed to investigate the character-
istics of the attaching force of magnetic wheels.
2. Permanent Magnet Wheel
2.1 Structure and operating principle
Fig. 1 shows the structure and the operation principle of newly
suggested permanent magnet wheel for mobile robot. It consists of
permanent magnets, steel-made wheels and pins. The magnetic flux
from permanent magnet generates attaching force acting on the
wheel as shown in Fig. 1(a). If we insert the induction pins to the

© KSPE and Springer 2009

 144 / OCTOBER 2009 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRECISION ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING Vol. 10, No. 4

hole of wheel, the part of magnetic flux from permanent magnet is
induced to flow through the pins, which results in weakening of
attaching force as shown Fig. (b).
Inducing Pin
mesh of wheel 2. For FE modeling, the magnetic properties of
Ceramic magnet material in Table 2 is assigned to permanent
magnets and the nonlinear magnetization curve of 1010 steel shown
in Fig. 4 is assigned to wheels and pins.

Wheel
Magnet
PM

N S N S Inducing

Pin

Magnetic

Flux

Steel Plate

(a) (b)
(a) (b)
Fig. 1 Structure and operation principle of proposed permanent
magnet wheel (a) attaching mechanism (b) detaching mechanism Fig. 3 Wheel (2) (a) 3-D model (b) mesh model
using induction pins
Table 2 Magnetic properties of ceramic magnet
2.2 Finite element analysis Residual Induction (Br) 0.4 (T)
To demonstrate proposed detaching mechanism using induction Coercivity (Hc) -8.9*105 (A/m)
pin, we perform 3-D static finite element analysis using commercial
FE program “MAXWELL”. 2.5

The goal of this device is to obtain easy detachment with high

2.0
attaching force i.e. we needs to minimize the ratio of detaching
force to attaching force. For high attaching force, more permanent
Flux density (T)

1.5
magnet is utilized while more pin-holes are created for easy
detachment. Therefore, the magnet size, the magnet arrangement,
1.0

number of magnets, number of pin hole and size of pin hole are
considered to be design variables. Accordingly, three different types
0.5

of wheels shown in Table 1 are modeled and we investigate two

cases of magnetic force using each model. One is to measure the 0.0
0 50000 100000 150000 200000 250000 300000
magnetic force without induction pins and the other is measure
Magnetizing field strength (A/m)
magnetic force with induction pins. Table 1 shows the
specifications of permanent magnet wheel models and Fig. 2 shows Fig. 4 Initial magnetization curves of 1010 steel
the schematic diagram respectively. Fig. 3 shows 3-D model and
Fig. 5 shows the side view plot of magnetic field vector of
Table 1 Specifications of permanent magnet wheels wheel (1). When the pins are put into the holes, we can verify that
the parts of magnetic flux from permanent magnets are guided to
Wheel type Magnet Wheel Pin
Diameter 10 mm 40 mm 9 mm flow through induction pins and the amount of magnetic flux
Wheel (1) Length 10 mm 10 mm 30 flowing from wheels to steel plate become decreased. Fig. 6 shows
Number 4 2 4 the results of finite element analysis calculating maximal attaching
diameter 20 mm 40 mm 9 mm force according to type of wheels without and with induction pins.
Length 10 mm 10 mm 30
Wheel (2)
Number 1 2 4
diameter 15 mm 50 mm 11 mm
Length 10 mm 10 mm 30
Wheel (3)
Number 3 2 4

(a) Without pins (b) With pins

Fig. 2 Schematic diagrams of permanent magnet wheels Fig. 5 Magnetic field vector plot of wheel (1)
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRECISION ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING Vol. 10, No. 4 OCTOBER 2009 / 145

In fact, the magnetic attaching force of permanent magnet wheel

oscillates because of changes of positions of permanent magnets
and inserting holes as the wheels rotates. Three wheels have
maximal force at the status as shown Fig. 2. In case of wheel (1)
that has four magnets of small size, the attaching force is 78 N, but
it is reduced to 15 N when four induction pins are inserted. In case
of wheel (2) which has one magnet of large size, the attaching force
is 99 N, but it is reduced to 16 N when four induction pins are
inserted. In case of wheel (3) which has three magnets of medium
size, the attaching force is 297 N, but it is reduced to 124 N when
(a)
four induction pins are inserted.

300

250

200
w/o pins Load Call
Load Cell
w/pins
Newton

150

100
Magnet Whee
Magnet Wheel
50

0
Wheel(1) Wheel(2) Wheel(3)

Fig. 6 Attaching force calculated by FEA according to types of

wheels (b)
Fig. 8 Experiment setup of magnet wheel (a) schematic diagram (b)
2.3 Experiments picture
To compare the performance of induction pin with FEA results,
we manufacture the sample model of permanent magnet wheels 300
according to the specification in Table 1. Fig. 7 shows the picture of 250
sample model of wheel 3. In addition, the experimental apparatus is w/o pins
200
w/ pins
Newton

constructed, which consists of a computer to acquire data and

150
control a motor, an oscilloscope to analyze values of attaching force
100
and a load cell (50kgf). Fig. 8 shows the schematic diagram and the
picture of experiment setup. Using load cell, we measure the 50

attaching forces of three wheels respectively. 0

Wheel(1) Wheel(2) Wheel(3)

Fig. 9 Attaching force according to types of wheels measured by

load cell

Table 3 Comparison of FEA and experiment

Wheel type FEA Experiment
Fig. 7 Manufactured permanent magnet wheel (2) w/o pin 78 N 72 N
Wheel (1) w/ pin 15 N 13 N
Fig. 9 shows the results of experiments according to types of ratio 0.19 0.18
wheels without pins and with pins. In case of wheel (1), the w/o pin 99 N 76 N
attaching force is 72 N, but it is reduced to 13 N when four Wheel (2) w/ pin 16 N 13 N
induction pins are inserted. In case of wheel (2), the attaching force ratio 0.16 0.17
is 76 N, but it is reduced to 13 N by when four induction pins are w/o pin 297 N 282 N
inserted. In case of wheel (3), the attaching force is 283 N, but it is Wheel (3) w/ pin 124 N 103 N
reduced to 103 N when three induction pins are inserted. ratio 0.42 0.36
Table 3 compares the results of FEA and experiments. The
attaching forces of FEA are slightly larger than one of experiment 2.4 Mobile robot with proposed wheels
overall, but they are all much the same in the ratio of detaching Fig. 10 shows the mobile robot manufactured with proposed
force with pins to attaching force without pins. The wheel (2) has magnet wheels. This device can move upward and downward on
the smallest ratio of detaching force to attaching force and the vertical wall in a speed 3 m/min without slip carrying the total load
wheel (2) is considered to be the best design among three wheels. of 6 kgf weight including 4 magnet wheel of type (2), motor and
 146 / OCTOBER 2009
other supplementary part using two AC motors of 15 kg-cm torque
each. Each motor is coupled to the wheel by the chain shown in Fig.
10(c). The maximum speed when moving upward is 3.7 m/min
while it is 5.7 m/min. The main problem on the performance is the
handling and the slip. The handing trouble of robot in right and left
is due to magnetic force between wheel and steel plate. In addition,
the slip and the idling of wheel happen sometimes when the rotation
of the first row wheel does not coincide with that of the second row
wheel.
300 mm
m “Development and Application of Wall-Climbing Robots,”
m
371
(a) (b)
(c)
Fig. 10 Mobile robot with proposed magnet wheels (a) 2-D
schematic diagram (b) picture (c) 3-D schematic diagram
3. Conclusions
This paper presents new design of permanent magnet wheel
using induction pins for easy detachment. To demonstrate enhanced
performance of newly suggested mechanism, we execute finite
element analysis and experiment with three different models of
wheels. The results show that the induction pins reduce the
magnetic attaching force efficiently. Thus, this new design of
magnetic wheel using induction pins for easy detachment may be
suitable for application in mobile robots. The manufactured mobile
robot with proposed magnet wheels has the problem in the handling
and the slip. In future research, the study about it will be performed.
It is expected that the less magnet wheels make the handling easer
and the coating of urethane to wheel lessens the slip.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This research was supported by Yeungnam University research
grants in 2008.
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