Development of Climbing Robots with Different Types of Adhesion

There is enormous potential in industrial inspection tasks for climbing robots than can work in hazardous environments, climb on different types of surfaces and enter into very small spaces that have difficult access. For example when cleaning, painting, repairing and diagnostic inspection of walls of general buildings, or performing non destructive testing inspection and maintenance of oil storage tanks, nuclear power plants, petrochemical factories, medical applications etc. The paper describes several types of robot adhesion in different environments, some of which have been incorporated into wall climbing robot designs. The adhesion methods discussed generate forces with permanent magnets, vacuum suction cups, propellers, needles or grippers, glue or adhesive tape, and Van der waal’s effect

Projektiranje i implementacija sustava upravljanja robotskim manipulatorom za udaljeno ispitivanje zavara na reaktorskim posudama

In this paper a design and implementation of a remote control system of a manipulator for weld inspection of nuclear reactor vessels are described. Based on the client-server TCP/IP software architecture, the presented control system enables an operator to perform the entire inspection procedure remotely over a network, avoiding exposure to dangerous radiation normally present in nuclear reactor environments. The developed graphical user interface provides tools for planning weld scan trajectories, their verification on a robot and reactor vessel 3D model, and finally, execution of planned trajectories on a remote robot. In addition, the weld inspection process can be monitored in parallel on a virtual robot and reactor vessel model and by watching live video streams captured by two cameras mounted on the robot.U ovom radu opisan je postupak projektiranja i implementacije sustava za udaljeno upravljanje robotskim manipulatorom koji služi za ispitivanje zavara na posudama nuklearnih reaktora. Opisani sustav temelji se na komunikacijskoj arhitekturi tipa TCP/IP klijent-poslužitelj, te omogućuje provedbu cjelokupnog postupka ispitivanja na daljinu, bez potrebe izlaganja opasnoj radijaciji koja je uobičajeno prisutna u okruženju nuklearnog reaktora. Postupak ispitivanja provodi se korištenjem razvijene programske aplikacije, koja putem grafičkog korisničkog sučelja operateru nudi alate za planiranje potrebnih trajektorija, njihovu provjeru na virtualnom 3D modelu posude i manipulatora, te izvršavanje na udaljenom manipulatoru. Operateru je također omogućen uvid u trenutno zbivanje u posudi tijekom cijelog postupka ispitivanja, paralelnim praćenjem virtualne 3D scene, te video slika s dvije specijalne kamere ugrađene na manipulatoru

Plenary keynote: Monitoring Safety Critical Infrastructure with Mobile Robots

Reliable Non Destructive Testing (NDT) is vital to the integrity and performance management of capital assets in safety critical industries such as aerospace, transportation, pipelines, petro-chemical processing, and power generation [ ]. The structures that are to be inspected are usually very large and located in remote and hazardous environments. The NDT system has to be deployed by first providing very expensive access, requiring the erection of scaffolding and lengthy preparation before NDT can start. In addition the system must be capable of finding and characterizing component and structural defects to a high probability of detection thereby decreasing the probability of failure. Another priority is to reduce outage time as the cost of loss of production runs into millions. This presentation describes recent developments in mobile wall climbing, swimming and pipe crawling robots that provide the means to perform NDT on difficult to access structures and provide the possibility of carrying out the NDT in-service thus preventing costly outages. In confined and hazardous environments they are the only means to reach a test site and perform the NDT. Our research, funded by the European Commission and Industry, is developing mobile NDT Robots to go inside petro-chemical storage tanks (while full of product) to inspect floors for pitting and corrosion [ ], to climb on the hulls of steel ships to inspect hundreds of kilometres of weld [ ], to inspect mooring chains securing off-shore oil and gas platforms in both air and underwater, to inspect the walls of petro-chemical storage tanks for corrosion and weld integrity, to inspect nozzle welds inside nuclear pressure vessels, to inspect concrete structures such as dams and buildings, to internally inspect buried pipelines that are currently not reachable by intelligent pigs, to climb up off-shore wind turbine towers to inspect the blades[ ], and to climb on aircraft wings and fuselage to detect for cracks and loose rivets

Robotics for nuclear power plants - Challenges and future perspectives

Use of robotics and computerized tools in Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) has been identified as a highly recommended practice by IAEA. The key rationale of robotics application has always been to avoid human exposure to hazardous environments and tasks ranging from scrutiny and general maintenance to decontamination and post accidental activities. To execute these activities, robots need to incorporate artificial intelligence, improved sensors capability, enhanced data fusion and compliant human like leg and hand structures for efficient motions. Next generation robotic systems in NPPs are expected to work in full autonomous mode in contrast to the current semi-autonomous scenarios. Far future systems could deploy humanoid robots as well. This paper presents state-of-theart of robotics developed for NPPs, associated challenges and finally comments on future directions