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ACTA AERONAUTICAET ASTRONAUTICA SINICA ›› 2013, Vol. 34 ›› Issue (7): 1748-1756.doi: 10.7527/S1000-6893.2013.0289

• Material Engineering and Mechanical Manufacturing • Previous Articles    

Study of Bionic Structure and Kinematics of Robot for Aircraft Fuel Tank Inspection

GAO Qingji, WANG Weijuan, NIU Guochen, WANG Lei, ZHENG Zunchao   

  1. Robotics Institute, Civil Aviation University of China, Tianjin 300300, China
  • Received:2012-09-11 Revised:2012-10-31 Online:2013-07-25 Published:2012-12-27
  • Supported by:

    The Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (ZXH2011D008)

Abstract:

The mechanical structure of a robot is designed based on bionics to meet the inspection requirements of aircraft fuel tank with high space constraints and explosive air. The robot consists of multiple flexible continuous sections whose bending and rotating are controlled with a cable-driven mode. For the continuous single section of flexible features, the methods of projection curvature and virtual coordinates are used to establish the mapping relationships among the cable length, single section angle and end-effector orientation. The decoupled kinematics between the multi-sections is developed based on the analysis of single-joint kinematics. Then the reachability of the robot is verified through a three-dimensional simulation experiment. Finally, the athletic ability of the robot and the validity of the proposed kinematic method are verified through prototype experiments.

Key words: aircraft fuel tanks, bionic structure, continuum, cable-drive, kinematics

CLC Number: