Climbing and Walking Robots

With the advancement of technology, new exciting approaches enable us to render mobile robotic systems more versatile, robust and cost-efficient. Some researchers combine climbing and walking techniques with a modular approach, a reconfigurable approach, or a swarm approach to realize novel prototypes as flexible mobile robotic platforms featuring all necessary locomotion capabilities. The purpose of this book is to provide an overview of the latest wide-range achievements in climbing and walking robotic technology to researchers, scientists, and engineers throughout the world. Different aspects including control simulation, locomotion realization, methodology, and system integration are presented from the scientific and from the technical point of view. This book consists of two main parts, one dealing with walking robots, the second with climbing robots. The content is also grouped by theoretical research and applicative realization. Every chapter offers a considerable amount of interesting and useful information

Development of a Wall Climbing Robot and Ground Penetrating Radar System for NonDestructive Testing of Vertical Safety Critical Concrete Structures

This research aims to develop a unique adhesion mechanism for wall climbing robot to automate the technology of non-destructive testing (NDT) of large safety critical reinforced concrete structures such as nuclear power plants, bridge columns, dams etc. This research work investigates the effect of key design parameters involved in optimizing the adhesion force achieved from rare earth neodymium magnets. In order to penetrate a nominal concrete cover to achieve magnetic coupling with buried rebar and generate high enough adhesion force by using minimum number of permanent magnets, criteria such as distance between multiple magnets, thickness of flux concentrator are evaluated by implementing finite element analysis (FEA). The proposed adhesion module consists of three N42 grade neodymium magnets arranged in a unique arrangement on a flux concentrator called yoke. The preliminary FEA results suggest that, using two yoke modules with minimum distance between them generate 82 N higher adhesion force compared to a single module system with higher forceto-weight ratio of 4.36. Presence of multiple rebars in a dense mesh setting can assist the adhesion module to concentrate the magnetic flux along separate rebars. This extended concentration area has led to higher adhesion force of 135.73 N as well as enabling the robot to take turns. Results suggest that, having a 50×50 mm rebar meshing can sustain steep robot rotational movement along it’s centre of gravity where the adhesion force can fall as low as 150 N. A small, mobile prototype robot with on-board force sensor is built that exhibited 3600 of manoeuvrability on a 50×50 mm meshed rebars test rig with maximum adhesion force of 108 N at 35 mm air gap. Both experiment and simulationresults prove that the magnetic adhesion mechanism can generate efficient adhesion force for the climbing robot to operate on vertical reinforced concrete structures. In terms of the NDT sensor, an in-depth analysis of the ground penetrating radar (GPR) is carried out to develop a low cost operational laboratory prototype. A one-dimensional numerical framework based on finite difference time domain (FDTD) method is developed to model response behaviour of a GPR. The effects of electrical properties such as dielectric constant, conductivity of the media are evaluated. A Gaussian shaped pulse is used as source which propagates through the 1D array grid, and the pulse interactions at different media interfaces are investigated. A real life application of GPR to detect a buried steel bar in 1 m thick concrete block is modelled, and the results present 100% accurate detection of the steel bar along with measured depth of the concrete cover. The developed framework could be implemented to model multi-layer dielectric blocks with detection capability of various buried objects. Experimental models are built by utilizing a proposed antenna miniaturization technique of dipole antenna with additional radiating arms. The resultant reflection coefficient values indicate a reduction of 55% and 44% in length reduction compared to a conventional 100 MHz and 200 MHz dipole antenna respectively. The GPR transmitting pulse generator features an enhanced tuneable feature to make the GPR system more adaptable to various environmental conditions. The prototype pulse generator circuit can produce pulses with variable width from 750 ps to 10 ns. The final assembled robotic GPR system’s performance is validated by its capability of detecting and localizing an aluminium sheet and a rebar of 12 mm diameter buried under a test rig built of wood to mimic the concrete structure environment. The final calculations reveal a depth error of +0.1 m. However, the key focus of this work is to prove the design concept and the error in measurement can be addressed by utilizing narrower bandwidth pulse that the proposed pulse generator is capable of generating. In general, the proposed robotic GPR system developed in this research proves the concept of feasibility of undertaking inspection procedure on large concrete structures in hazardous environments that may not be accessible to human inspector

Maintenance Management of Wind Turbines

“Maintenance Management of Wind Turbines” considers the main concepts and the state-of-the-art, as well as advances and case studies on this topic. Maintenance is a critical variable in industry in order to reach competitiveness. It is the most important variable, together with operations, in the wind energy industry. Therefore, the correct management of corrective, predictive and preventive politics in any wind turbine is required. The content also considers original research works that focus on content that is complementary to other sub-disciplines, such as economics, finance, marketing, decision and risk analysis, engineering, etc., in the maintenance management of wind turbines. This book focuses on real case studies. These case studies concern topics such as failure detection and diagnosis, fault trees and subdisciplines (e.g., FMECA, FMEA, etc.) Most of them link these topics with financial, schedule, resources, downtimes, etc., in order to increase productivity, profitability, maintainability, reliability, safety, availability, and reduce costs and downtime, etc., in a wind turbine. Advances in mathematics, models, computational techniques, dynamic analysis, etc., are employed in analytics in maintenance management in this book. Finally, the book considers computational techniques, dynamic analysis, probabilistic methods, and mathematical optimization techniques that are expertly blended to support the analysis of multi-criteria decision-making problems with defined constraints and requirements

NASA Tech Briefs, December 1990

Topics: New Product Ideas; NASA TU Services; Electronic Components and Circuits; Electronic Systems; Physical Sciences; Materials; Computer Programs; Mechanics; Machinery; Fabrication Technology; Mathematics and Information Sciences; Life Sciences

Index to 1985 NASA Tech Briefs, volume 10, numbers 1-4

Short announcements of new technology derived from the R&D activities of NASA are presented. These briefs emphasize information considered likely to be transferrable across industrial, regional, or disciplinary lines and are issued to encourage commercial application. This index for 1985 Tech Briefs contains abstracts and four indexes: subject, personal author, originating center, and Tech Brief Number. The following areas are covered: electronic components and circuits, electronic systems, physical sciences, materials, life sciences, mechanics, machinery, fabrication technology, and mathematics and information sciences

Climbing and Walking Robots

Nowadays robotics is one of the most dynamic fields of scientific researches. The shift of robotics researches from manufacturing to services applications is clear. During the last decades interest in studying climbing and walking robots has been increased. This increasing interest has been in many areas that most important ones of them are: mechanics, electronics, medical engineering, cybernetics, controls, and computers. Today’s climbing and walking robots are a combination of manipulative, perceptive, communicative, and cognitive abilities and they are capable of performing many tasks in industrial and non- industrial environments. Surveillance, planetary exploration, emergence rescue operations, reconnaissance, petrochemical applications, construction, entertainment, personal services, intervention in severe environments, transportation, medical and etc are some applications from a very diverse application fields of climbing and walking robots. By great progress in this area of robotics it is anticipated that next generation climbing and walking robots will enhance lives and will change the way the human works, thinks and makes decisions. This book presents the state of the art achievments, recent developments, applications and future challenges of climbing and walking robots. These are presented in 24 chapters by authors throughtot the world The book serves as a reference especially for the researchers who are interested in mobile robots. It also is useful for industrial engineers and graduate students in advanced study

Advanced Knowledge Application in Practice

The integration and interdependency of the world economy leads towards the creation of a global market that offers more opportunities, but is also more complex and competitive than ever before. Therefore widespread research activity is necessary if one is to remain successful on the market. This book is the result of research and development activities from a number of researchers worldwide, covering concrete fields of research

33rd Aerospace Mechanisms Symposium

The proceedings of the 33rd Aerospace Mechanisms Symposium are reported. JPL hosted the conference, which was held at the Pasadena Conference and Exhibition Center, Pasadena, California, on May 19-21, 1999. Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space cosponsored the symposium. Technology areas covered include bearings and tribology; pointing, solar array and deployment mechanisms; orbiter/space station; and other mechanisms for spacecraft

Cumulative index to NASA Tech Briefs, 1986-1990, volumes 10-14

Tech Briefs are short announcements of new technology derived from the R&D activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. These briefs emphasize information considered likely to be transferrable across industrial, regional, or disciplinary lines and are issued to encourage commercial application. This cumulative index of Tech Briefs contains abstracts and four indexes (subject, personal author, originating center, and Tech Brief number) and covers the period 1986 to 1990. The abstract section is organized by the following subject categories: electronic components and circuits, electronic systems, physical sciences, materials, computer programs, life sciences, mechanics, machinery, fabrication technology, and mathematics and information sciences

Robotics 2010

Without a doubt, robotics has made an incredible progress over the last decades. The vision of developing, designing and creating technical systems that help humans to achieve hard and complex tasks, has intelligently led to an incredible variety of solutions. There are barely technical fields that could exhibit more interdisciplinary interconnections like robotics. This fact is generated by highly complex challenges imposed by robotic systems, especially the requirement on intelligent and autonomous operation. This book tries to give an insight into the evolutionary process that takes place in robotics. It provides articles covering a wide range of this exciting area. The progress of technical challenges and concepts may illuminate the relationship between developments that seem to be completely different at first sight. The robotics remains an exciting scientific and engineering field. The community looks optimistically ahead and also looks forward for the future challenges and new development