Students create Spiderman Suit for wall climbing

Neeraj Bagga

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, December 27

Students of the mechanical engineering department of Global Institutes demonstrated wall climbing using an indigenous device named the Spiderman Suit.

The device, created by students, is built on the formula of vacuum operation to assist a human climber to easily undertake a climb on vertical or angular walls.

It can reach points in a building where heavy cranes cannot extend or where the wall front is tricky and has been a big headache for tall structures and high-rise buildings.

During the demonstration at the Einstein Block of the campus, students were thrilled to see the working model.

Dr Akashdeep Singh, vice-chairman of the institute, said the device had been designed and developed by a seven-member team of final year students of mechanical engineering, including Bhupinder Singh, Arshdeep Singh, Arpit Bassi, Baldeep Singh, Barjinder Singh, Chamkaur Singh and Dilawar Singh, under the guidance of assistant professor Himanshu Tripathi of the mechanical engineering department.

Students had first designed and then analysed the equipment using Creo-1.0 software.

The vice-chairman explained that the Spiderman Suit could be used to climb elevated buildings that had been built as clusters such as in an old part of the city.

The suit can have wide-spread applications in the field of defence, fire-fighting, terrorist operations, rescue actions, construction and building maintenance, besides others.

The Spiderman Suit can generate up to 2,400 mm3/per second suction pressure and support a person with over 100 kg weight to easily climb any desired height.

The major components used are vacuum pump motor, gloves, suction pads, pressure release valves, besides foot matchers.

The machine operates on 230 volt single phase power supply and costs around Rs 20,000.

Dr Akashdeep said presently, a switch was used to on or off the vacuum during the climb and students were working on single lever-like gears to smoothen the shifting operations and make it simpler, efficient and more practical.

The device created in the institute laboratory is environment-friendly as it emits no pollution and it is light in weight.