Abstract
Maintenance for nuclear fusion vessel is crucial, yet it faces great difficulty due to the complex internal physical and geometric conditions. For this reason, such remote control mobile robot system is required to do the inboard detection and maintenance work instead of human beings. Under the above background, this paper presents a wormlike creeping robot system working on the V-shaped circular slot at the bottom of the EAST nuclear fusion vessel, and constructs the engineering prototype. The wormlike creeping robot adopts three-part structure, which consists of fore segment, mid segment and back segment connected by bidirectional universal joint. The fore and back segments stretch the paws to contact the surface of V-shaped slot, while the mid segment realizes the movement of robot by axial expansion. Functional analysis is devoted to modules of robot system. For the requirements of walking stability on the V-shaped slot, creeping gait planning is analyzed. Finally, the engineering prototype is running in the simulated vessel to test the synthesis movement properties and evaluate the mechanical properties. The test shows that the wormlike creeping robot system has good feasibility and effectiveness.
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Acknowledgements
This research work was supported by the China National Magnetic-Confinement Fusion Energy R&D Program (ITER) and funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grant No. 61503361 and the National Science and Technology Major Project of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No. 2012GB102007). The authors wish to thank the research group for their great contributions to the presented research. The views and opinions expressed in this paper are the sole responsibility of the authors.
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Zhang, Q., Zhou, L., Liu, Y., Wang, Z. (2017). Design and Implementation of Wormlike Creeping Robot System Working at the Bottom of the Nuclear Fusion Vessel. In: Chen, W., Hosoda, K., Menegatti, E., Shimizu, M., Wang, H. (eds) Intelligent Autonomous Systems 14. IAS 2016. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 531. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48036-7_79
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48036-7_79
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