STTR Phase I: Development of a Remote Climbing Robot for Automating Welding Processes in the Ship Building Industry

这个小型企业技术转移(STTR)第一阶段研究项目将展示一种新型的、攀登的机器人制造平台，以显著促进美国的自动化船舶制造技术。为美国造船业提供自动化的目标带来了巨大的挑战，原因有几个：该行业呈现出高度非结构化的环境，这可能会限制自动机械的移动性；该行业的制造要求要求在制造设备的操作上具有很大程度的灵活性；该行业需要在物理要求苛刻的环境中可靠地运行。该提案提供了一种应对这些挑战的解决方案，将最近为燃煤电力行业远程检查任务开发的爬升机器人技术与自动(但手动驱动或跟踪/基于特征的)焊接设备相结合，并增加了在开发适用于恶劣环境的智能和机械坚固设备方面的经验教训。在现代远洋船舶中，在制造舱壁组件的过程中需要进行大量的焊接和切割。为该行业自动化这些任务提供了几个显著的优势：为危险环境或需要拆卸以进行人工检查的空间有限的环境改进工艺安全；通过减少对人工、重复性活动或复杂设备的设置的需求来降低成本；以及随着工艺自动化而提高质量。从长远来看，这些努力将成为将这一灵活的自动化工具扩展到船舶制造、检查和维护过程的许多部分的基础。最后，拟议的工作将促进在非结构化环境中远程执行机器人任务的知识状况，并将有助于提高许多其他领域的自动化程度，这些领域提出的任务对人类来说是危险的或昂贵的。

This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I research project will demonstrate a novel, climbing, robotic manufacturing platform to significantly advance automated ship fabrication techniques in the US. The goal of providing automation to the American ship-building industry poses significant challenges for several reasons: the industry presents a highly unstructured environment that could be restrictive to the mobility of autonomous machines; manufacturing requirements in the industry dictate a large degree of flexibility in the operation of fabrication equipment; and the industry requires reliable operation in a physically demanding environment. This proposal offers a solution to these challenges by merging recent climbing robot technology developed for remote inspection tasks in the coal-fired electric power industry with automated (but manually driven or tracked/feature-based) welding equipment and by adding lessons learned in developing intelligent and mechanically robust equipment for harsh environments. In modern sea-going vessels, there is a vast amount of welding and cutting required during the process of creating the bulkhead assemblies. Automating these tasks for this industry provides several significant advantages: process safety improvements for hazardous environments or for space-constrained environments that require disassembly for manual inspection; cost reductions through decreased need for manual, repetitive activities or setup of elaborate equipment; and, quality improvements as processes are automated. In the longer term, these efforts will serve as a base for extending this flexible automation tool to many parts of the ship fabrication, inspection and maintenance process. Finally, the proposed work will advance the state of knowledge in performing robotic tasks remotely in unstructured environments, and will contribute to increased automation in many other fields that present tasks that are hazardous or expensive for humans.