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

这个小企业技术转让（STTR）第一阶段研究项目将展示一个新颖的，爬升的机器人制造平台，以显着推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重大挑战，原因有几个：该行业呈现出高度非结构化的环境，这可能会限制自主机器的移动性;该行业的制造要求决定了制造设备操作的高度灵活性;该行业需要在物理要求苛刻的环境中可靠运行。该提案通过将最近为燃煤电力行业的远程检查任务开发的攀爬机器人技术与自动化（但手动驱动或跟踪/基于功能）焊接设备相结合，并通过增加在开发智能和机械坚固的设备以应对恶劣环境方面的经验教训，为这些挑战提供了解决方案。在现代海船中，在制造舱壁组件的过程中需要大量的焊接和切割。为该行业自动化这些任务提供了几个显著的优势：对于危险环境或需要拆卸进行手动检查的空间受限环境，可以提高工艺安全性;通过减少手动重复活动或设置精密设备的需求来降低成本;以及，由于工艺自动化而提高质量。从长远来看，这些努力将成为将这种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，拟议的工作将推进在非结构化环境中远程执行机器人任务的知识状态，并将有助于提高许多其他领域的自动化，这些领域的任务对人类来说是危险或昂贵的。

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.