Material Engineering and Mechanical Manufacturing

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

  • GAO Qingji ,
  • WANG Weijuan ,
  • NIU Guochen ,
  • WANG Lei ,
  • ZHENG Zunchao
Expand
  • Robotics Institute, Civil Aviation University of China, Tianjin 300300, China

Received date: 2012-09-11

  Revised date: 2012-10-31

  Online 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.

Cite this article

GAO Qingji , WANG Weijuan , NIU Guochen , WANG Lei , ZHENG Zunchao . Study of Bionic Structure and Kinematics of Robot for Aircraft Fuel Tank Inspection[J]. ACTA AERONAUTICAET ASTRONAUTICA SINICA, 2013 , 34(7) : 1748 -1756 . DOI: 10.7527/S1000-6893.2013.0289

References

[1] Ely J J, Nguyen T X, Dudley K L, et al. An investigation of EME as a potential cause of fuel tank ignition. Proceedings of the 19th Digital Avionics Systems Conference, 2000: 3A/1-3A/10.



[2] Robinson G, Davies J B C. Continuum robots—a state of the art. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 1999,4: 2849-2854.



[3] Hanan M W, Walker I D. Kinematics and the implementation of an elephants trunk manipulator and other continuum style robots. Journal of Robotic Systems, 2003, 20(2): 45-63.



[4] Sun L N, Hu H Y, Li M T. A review on continuum robot. Robot, 2010, 32(5): 688-694. (in Chinese) 孙立宁, 胡海燕, 李满天. 连续型机器人研究综述.机器人, 2010, 32(5): 688-694.



[5] Jones B A, McMahan W, Walker I D. Design and analysis of a novel pneumatic manipulator. Proceedings of 3rd IFAC Symposium on Mechatronic Systems, 2004: 745-750.



[6] McMahan W, Chitrakaran V, Csencsits M, et al. Field trials and testing of the OctArm continuum manipulator. Proceedings of 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2006: 2336-2341.



[7] Jones B A, Walker I D. Kinematics for multisection continuum robots. IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 2006, 22(1): 43-55.



[8] Jones B A, Walker I D. Practical kinematics for real-time implementation of continuum robots. IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 2006, 22(6): 1087-1099.



[9] Simaan N. Snake-like units using flexible backbones and actuation redundancy for enhanced miniaturization. Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2005: 3012-3017.



[10] Xu K, Simaan N. Analytic formulation for kinematics, statics, and shape restoration of multibackbone continuum robots via elliptic integrals. Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics, 2010, 2: 1-13.



[11] Simaann N, Taylor R, Flint P. A dexterous system for laryngeal surgery. Proceedings of 2004 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004, 1: 351-357.



[12] Camarillo D B, Milne C F, Carlson C R, et al. Mechanics modeling of tendon-driven continuum manipulators. IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 2008, 24(6): 1262-1273.



[13] Camarillo D B, Carlson C R, Salisbury J K. Configuration tracking for continuum manipulators with coupled tendon drive. IEEE Transactions on Roboics, 2009, 25(4): 798-808.



[14] Camarillo D B, Loewke K E, Carlson C R, et al. Vision based 3-D shape sensing of flexible manipulators. Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2008: 2940-2947.



[15] Yang G L, Lin W, Kurbanhusen M S, et al. Kinematic design of a 7-DOF cable-driven humanoid arm: a solution-in-nature approach. Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, 2005: 444-449.



[16] Hu H Y, Wang P F, Sun L N, et al. Kinematic analysis and simulation for cable-driven continuum robot. Journal of Mechanical Engineering, 2010, 19(46): 1-12. (in Chinese) 胡海燕, 王鹏飞, 孙立宁,等. 线驱动连续型机器人的运动学分析与仿真.机械工程学报, 2010,19(46): 1-12.

Outlines

/