Autonomous inspection and repair of aircraft composite structures

This paper deals with the development of an innovative approach for inspection and repair of damage in aeronautical composites that took place in the first two years of the H2020 CompInnova project which. The aim is a newly designed robotic platform for autonomous inspection using combined infrared thermography (IRT) and phased array (PA) non-destructive investigation for damage detection and characterization, while integrated with laser repair capabilities. This will affect the increasing societal need for safer aircraft in the lowest possible cost, while new and effective techniques of inspection are needed because of the rapidly expanding use of composites in the aerospace industry

Keynote: Robotic Non Destructive Testing

This keynote paper aims to highlight the application of mobile robots to perform inspection and non destructive testing (NDT) in industries such as aerospace, large scale fabrication, pipelines, petro-chemical storage and power generation. It describes industrial tasks where regular inspection is essential to ensure the integrity of infrastructure such as storage tanks, pressure vessels, pipelines, aircraft, ships, etc, and to provide managers of capital assets with data to plan outages and to make decisions on the life span of their infrastructure. The development of robot prototypes is described for these industrial tasks. These robots deploy NDT systems by first providing access to large vertical structures or to test sites that are inaccessible to humans. They are designed to reduce outage time, or where possible, carry out the NDT online thus preventing costly outages

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThis dissertation defines a new class of climbing robots, steering-plane bipeds, which encompasses a large number of existing climbing robots. Three major levels of motion planning are characterized which are common to this class of robots, namely, path planning, step planning, and gait planning. The unified presentation of related motion planning techniques is more generally applicable and more thorough than related algorithms in other literature, while more explicitly identifying limitations and tradeoffs due to alternate design choices within the class of steering-plane bipeds. A novel spline-based method for generating gaits is presented which uses separate path and time rate controls, and explicitly defined foot approach and departure directions that allows 1) a nominal guarantee of collision-free foot trajectories when close to the desired step configuration, 2) independent control of gait shape and speed, and 3) a unified representation of the four gait families of steering-plane bipeds: flipping, inchworm, step-through, and spinning gaits. This dissertation presents a thorough examination of the variations within each gait family, rather than merely presenting a representative instance of each. Concrete case studies applying the techniques of this dissertation are presented for optimizing the gaits for overall speed, energy efficiency, and minimum gripping force and moment. The results highlight that many common gaits in the literature are far from optimal. Results and general rules of thumb for gait planning are extracted that allow guidance for obtaining good results even if using alternate planning techniques without optimization

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

Metodología de diseño y control de robots escaladores. Aplicación a las tareas de inspección

Durante los ultimos años son notables los esfuerzos que se están dedicando a incrementar e1 nive1 de automatización de los sectores mas tradiciona1es en este aspecto, como por ejemplo, es el de la construcción. La principal dificultad que presentan estos sectores es 1a falta de uniformidad en su entorno, al contrario de lo que ocurre en la industria del automóvil, o en las manufactureras, por ejemplo. Conforme aumenta el número y edad de las construcciones y de las obras civiles, tambien se incrementa el número de trabajos de inspección y mantenimiento que hay que hacer sobre ellas. Todas las actividades relacionadas con estos trabajos son muy peligrosas y sólo pueden ser llevadas a cabo por personal muy cualificado. Durante los ultimos años ha crecido el interés por crear robots que sean capaces de cumplir con estas tareas, y son muchos los grupos de investigación dedicados a este campo. Los robots industriales tradicionales no sirven para realizar esta clase de trabajos. Estan pensados, principalmente, para trabajar en entornos estructurados. Los robots que trabaj en en un edificio o en un puente tienen que ser capaces de moverse por toda la estructura, escalar por ella, y llegar a los lugares mas inaccesibles. En esta tesis se abordan temas de gran importancia respecto al disafio de esta clase de robots, y los movimientos posibles en las estructuras tridimensionales. Por estructura tridimensional se entiende lo que puede ser el esqueleto de un edificio, formado por vigas y pilares, la estructura metalica de un puente, o la cubierta metalica de un polideportivo. El reino animal es una buena fu ente de estudio para el diseño de un robot escalador. En esta tesis se ha hecho un estudio de los metodos de agarre y un anaIisis de la estructura muscular y ósea de los animales escaladores mas significativos. También se han estudiado las estructuras cinemciticas de algunos de ellos. Hay que indicar que muchos de ellos han sido y son fuente de inspiración para la creación de los robots escaladores mas conocidos. Sin embargo, no se debe perder de vista una máxima: el movimiento de cualquier animal, ya sea caminando, corriendo o escalando, siempre será mucho más elegante y más avanzado que el que se pueda lograr con cualquier vehiculo caminante 0 escalador, de los construidos hasta ahora. Si estos robots trabajan en un entorno muy amplio, es necesario comunicarse con ellos desde una estación base. Es importante tener una comunicación fiable, sabiendo que tipo de control se lleva a cabo en el robot y cual en la estación base. En esta tesis se proponen distintos niveles jerárquicos de control, junto con diferentes niveles de seguridad para conseguir un buen funcionamiento de todo el sistema, tanto en el ordenador de la base como en el que esta a bordo del robot escalador. A la hora de controlar la posición de un robot escalador, la fuerza de gravedad j uega un gran papel, su efecto es mucho mayor que el que se pueda producir en un robot tradicional. Normalmente los elementos que componen un robot escalador se eligen con caracteristicas de dimensiones y peso mas ajustadas que en el caso de un robot industrial. Un robot escalador debe ser capaz de soportar y mover su peso, mientras que los robots con una base fija no. Si se quiere desarrollar un sistema de control de posicionamiento adecuado para un robot escalador se hace necesario la creación y estudio de modelos dinamicos que permitan conocer el papel primordial que juega, la gravedad durante el movimiento del robot.In the last years great efforts are made to increase the level of automatization on those fields, that like building, are still making use of traditional working techniques. The main difficulty that they recently face is the lack of uniformity in their environments, contrary to such sectors like manufacture or car industry. The increasing number and age of buildings and civil construction requires an increase in the number of inspections and maintenance works on these buildings. All tasks related to this work are very dangerous and can only be carried out by a highly qualified personnel. In the last years the interest in designing robots able to perform this sort of tasks has considerably increased. Therefore, many research groups are recently devoted to this study. Traditional industrial robots are not able to perform this sort of tasks, since they are designed to work always under structural environments. However, robots working on a building or a bridge should be able to move themselves along the whole structure and reach also the most hidden places. Relevant aspects to the design of these robots are dealt with in this thesis, as well as robot movements in a tridimensional structure. Under tridimensional structure it is understood, for instance, the structure of a building, its beams and pillars, metallic piers of a bridge or the metallic frame of a sport center. Animals offer a great inspiration for the design of climbing robots. A study of grasping methods, as well as an analyses of the muscular and bone structure of the most representative climbing animals, are presented in this work. Kinematics of some of them are also considered. It is interesting to point out that the design of the most important climbing robots are inspired in these animals. However, until now it has not been designed a walking or climbing robot whose movements when walking, running or climbing, are so smooth and perfect as those of the animals. When these robots work in an spacious environment, it is required the use of a central station for the communication to be established. It is essential to rely on a good communication to have always knowledge of the state of the tasks being performed by the robots an in the central station. Different hierarchy levels of control and security are proposed in this thesis in order to achieve a satisfactory work of the system as whole; in the "ground" computer as well as in on board computers. Gravity plays a crucial role in the control of climber positions, due mainly to the greater gravitational effect on these robots than on traditional ones. Normally the climbing robot components are chosen more adequately regarding weight and dimensions, contrary to the case of traditional robots. A climber should be able to bare and move its own weight whereas this property is not traditionally required. In order to obtain an adequate control system of a climber it is needed the study and development of dynamic models, which allows us to know the relevant role played by the gravity in these systems

The Second Joint NASA/FAA/DOD Conference on Aging Aircraft

The purpose of the Conference was to bring together world leaders in aviation safety research, aircraft design and manufacturing, fleet operation and aviation maintenance to disseminate information on current practices and advanced technologies that will assure the continued airworthiness of the aging aircraft in the military and commercial fleets. The Conference included reviews of current industry practices, assessments of future technology requirements, and status of aviation safety research. The Conference provided an opportunity for interactions among the key personnel in the research and technology development community, the original equipment manufacturers, commercial airline operators, military fleet operators, aviation maintenance, and aircraft certification and regulatory authorities. Conference participation was unrestricted and open to the international aviation community