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A Magnetic Climbing Robot to Perform Autonomous Welding in the Shipbuilding Industry Olivier Kermorgant

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A Magnetic Climbing Robot to Perform Autonomous Welding in the Shipbuilding Industry Olivier Kermorgant A magnetic climbing robot to perform autonomous welding in the shipbuilding industry Olivier Kermorgant To cite this version: Olivier Kermorgant. A magnetic climbing robot to perform autonomous welding in the shipbuilding industry. Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, Elsevier, 2018, 53. hal-01767609 HAL Id: hal-01767609 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01767609 Submitted on 16 Apr 2018 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. A magnetic climbing robot to perform autonomous welding in the shipbuilding industryI Olivier Kermorgant Laboratoire des Sciences du Num´eriquede Nantes LS2N, Ecole´ Centrale de Nantes Abstract In this paper we present the mechanical and control design of a magnetic tracked mobile robot. The robot is designed to move on vertical steel ship hulls and to be able to carry 100 kg payload, including its own weight. The mechanical components are presented and the sizing of the magnetic tracks is detailed. All computation is embedded in order to reduce time delays between processes and to keep the robot functional even in case of signal loss with the ground station. The main sensor of the robot is a 2D laser scanner, that gives information on the hull surface and is used for several tasks. We focus on the welding task and expose the control algorithm that allows the robot to follow a straight line for the welding process. Keywords: Continuous track, welding robot, climbing robot 1. Introduction be performed (up to 10). A typical ship thus re- quires several kilometers of straight line welding. In the advanced manufacturing area, one chal- Human welder expertise is far from being fully ex- lenge is to extend the use of autonomous or col- ploited in this task, and it can benefit from an au- laborative robots in several industries such as car tonomous process. The stakes for the ship builder companies, plane and ship building or renewable en- are to reduce lifts or scaffoldings use, and to have ergies. Whereas most of the innovations deal with their welders available for more complex tasks such traditional or mobile robot arms in classical manu- as corners or welding in small places where adapt- facturing plants, another source of productivity can ability is crucial. be found in more exotic locations: large structures This task requires the accurate positioning of an such as an aircraft or a ship indeed have their own embedded welding torch. The torch is carried by constraints when it comes to mobile robotics. In a 2-degrees of freedom arm located at the rear of this work we design a mobile robot able to navi- the robot and benefits from laser scanner feedback gate on vertical steel surfaces such as ship hulls. for the analysis of the welding joint. The motion The robot can perform various tasks, either au- law of the torch is not detailed and we focus on the tonomously or in tele-operation depending on the capabilities of the vehicle in terms of alignment and complexity. Currently, hull welding is performed positioning with regards to the welding joint, which manually by a welder mounted on a boom lift or drives the position of the welding torch. Absolute scaffoldings. This is both dangerous and costly, as localization on the hull, or longitudinal positioning the typical size of a ship is some hundred meters along the welding joint, are not considered in this length and a few tens of meters high. Besides, due work. Welding results are presented to show the to the thickness of the hull, several passes have to reliability of the process. Most of the works on climbing robots focus on mechanical design and adhesion principle. A survey I c 2018. This manuscript version is the accepted preprint [1] indicates that the two most popular approaches and is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license for climbing robots are the use of suction force and, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ when the surface allows it, magnetic force. Email address: [email protected] (Olivier Kermorgant) A suction-based climbing robot was presented Preprint accepted to Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing April 16, 2018 in [2] for the inspection of radioactive cylindrical back is similar to our case, though we need a higher tanks. The payload is only 3 kg. Alternatively, accuracy due to the welding task. Navigation are in [3] a quadruped walking robot is presented with usually not studied for tracked vehicles, as their au- suction pads at each of the 4 contact links. The tonomous modes are often used in large areas where control of such a robot is of course quite tedious. GPS feedback is available and where rough accu- In [4] a low cost wall climbing robot is proposed. racy is enough [16]. Improving open-loop odometry Classical tracks are used with a vacuum pump that relies on the study of the track-soil interaction [17] increases the grip on the surface. The payload of which may not be enough for welding. this robot is only 500 g. In this work, we focus on the laser feedback from Magnetic force-based robot may use electromag- [18], that proposes several trajectories for the weld- nets [5, 6], which are interesting as they can be ac- ing torch that can be computed from the welding tivated at will and increase the control possibilities joint 2D profile. This approach is classically used of the platform. On the other hand, permanent for non-mobile welding robots [19, 20] or robot that magnets can be use with magnetic wheels [7, 8]. switch between motion and welding [21]. The main advantage is that no energy is spent on Compared to previous works, we propose a whole the adhesion, but it makes the control more diffi- mechanical and control design for autonomous hull cult and requires more power in order to cope with welding. The prototype has been tested on real the friction between the wheels and the surface. A ship hulls, which has revealed that the key feature magnetic tracked robot is presented in [9] with an is the autonomous line following in order to ensure emphasis on the sizing of the magnetic pads. The accurate positioning of the welding torch. goal is to perform oil tanks inspection with manual We exploit the laser feedback needed for the weld- control of the robot. ing, to perform joint tracking. For cost reasons only Alternative technologies to suction and magnetic one laser scanner is considered on the robot. The forces have been investigated. In [10],thermoplastic contribution lies in the design, control law and state adhesive bonds are used instead of magnets or suc- estimation of the mobile base. In Section 2 the tion pads. Even if it leads to a very high payload, general design and components of the robot are de- the number of cycles is limited and this would in- tailed. We also focus on the main mechanical chal- duce too many maintenance operations for the ship lenge, that is the magnetic caterpillar. The control industry. Another technology has been proposed architecture is then presented in Section 3, with for non-magnetic wall climbing [11], but again the the design of an estimator and control law to per- payload is only 100 g and the control is not auto- form welding joint tracking. Experiments on joint mated. tracking and welding results are then presented in High-payload wall climbing robot designs are pro- Section 4. posed in [12, 13]. Here the vehicle is equipped with wheels and an adjustable magnet allows the con- 2. Overall design trol of the adhesion force, allowing up to 50 kg pay- load. Although the robot is designed for welding, In this section we detail the mechanical design no performance analysis is done for the arm posi- and the components of the robot. The starting tioning and the control also seems to be manual. point for the sizing of the platform was the weight Another manually-driven robot is proposed in [14], and payload that directly impact the number of using magnetic tracks for hull inspection. magnets, hence the general size of the robot. The In our case, safety imposes that the robot should current form factor is 80 cm length and 50 cm not fall even in the case of power failure. In addi- width, with 100 kg total weight including the weight tion, the robot is designed to work on ship hulls. of the external cables (power supply and welding That is why we chose magnetic tracks, even if as torch cable). The robot structure is composed of we will see it leads to constraints on the navigation aluminum. A 600 W external power supply delivers part. 3x48 V. We first list the robot components before Most of the mentioned robots assume manual detailing the sizing of the magnetic track. control. On the opposite, in [15] a magnetic robot is proposed with a laser feedback for autonomous in- 2.1. Components spection. The design is similar to [13] with wheels The prototype is shown in Fig. 1. The laser scan- and adjustable permanent magnets. The laser feed- ner is hidden behind a protective layer.
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