Design and Motion Analysis of a Magnetic Climbing Robot Applied to Ship Shell Plate
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript proposes a wheeled robot with retractable legs traversing ship shell plate with obstacle avoidance. The introduction sets the scene providing the motivation for such a system in this environment and the motivation for the retractable leg design based upon flies. The figures and the explanation of the proposed robot and the motion system is well explained with good use of figures and equations.
The biggest flaw with this paper is the lack of any simulation tests of the design and any real values for the robot, while the theoretical model looks ok the lack of real figures or simulated experiments means I am uncertain of how elements such as robot mass, wheel based, magnetic force, motor power etc would affect the performance of such a robot the ship shell surface.
There are also some details regarding the obstacle avoidance that could be added for clarity. For example figure 3 shows that obstacles would all fit under one wheel, a would the obstacles in the ship shell plate always fit this scenario, or could the obstacles be for instance wider and require multiple legs on 1 side of the robot to be retracted which may affect the drive system and traction to the surface via the magnets?
There are a number of small English language edits required these include but are not limited to:
Line 9 – “of ship” should be “of a ship”
Line 12 – “that can all position” consider rewording unsure of what this is trying to say.
Line 18 - “robot was adapted” to “robot adapted”
Line 25 – “ship” to “ships”
Line 33 – “materials, The” to “materials, the”
Line 50 and 57 – “the flies” to “flies”
Line 54 – “there has slat barriers” should this be just “has slat barriers”?
Line 85 – “of combine” to “of combining”
Line 162 – “USN-CAN” should this be “USB-CAN”
Line 165 – Could add some clarity of what pv and pp mode are.
Line 174 – “Provides” to “Providing”
Line 184 – “It can be achieved by directly 184 shrinking the legs to the shortest length.” Is this just repeating the previous line?
Figure 9 - “Ratation” to “Rotation”
Line 247 – “controlled” to “controlled”
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors present an interesting work related to motion analysis of a magnetic climbing robot applied to ship shell plate. In order to improve their work my commets are given as follows:
In page 2, lines 68 to 81, the authors should support their proposals with solids arguments and describe it in a clear way. Is important motivate their work from this point since is not clear what is their main contribution.
In section 2, the authors should provide information related to the control system in a flow chart to describe their general working. The authors should add parameters such as capacity, size, motor capacity, so on.
In figure 11, add x variables
In section 3.1.2, the kinematic model should be simulated and analyzed
In section 3.2, the path tracking should be simulated and analyzed
In conclusion the authors mention that a motion control system for a magnetic climbing robot was designed, How the authors support this information? The authors should present all features regarding the control. Law, stability proof, constraints, so on.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I would like to thank the authors for resubmitting the paper the changes made based upon the previous comments. The addition of simulation results helps to strengthen the contribution of the robot model.
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors present an interesting work related to design and motion analysis of a magnetic climbing robot 2 applied to ship shell plate. They have already cover all my comments.
