Kinematic Analysis and Design of the HyReCRo Robot: a Serial- Parallel and Redundant Structure-Climbing Robot
Three-dimensional vertical structures such as bridges, skeletons of buildings in the construction industry, or electrical and telecommunication towers, require inspection and maintenance tasks. These tasks imply important risks for the human operators that usually perform them, such as falling from...
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| Format: | doctoral thesis |
| Publication Date: | 2018 |
| Country: | España |
| Institution: | Universidad Miguel Hernández de Elche |
| Repository: | REDIUMH. Depósito Digital de la UMH |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:dspace.umh.es:11000/5114 |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/11000/5114 |
| Access Level: | Open access |
| Keyword: | Robótica CDU::6 - Ciencias aplicadas::62 - Ingeniería. Tecnología |
| Summary: | Three-dimensional vertical structures such as bridges, skeletons of buildings in the construction industry, or electrical and telecommunication towers, require inspection and maintenance tasks. These tasks imply important risks for the human operators that usually perform them, such as falling from heights. A solution to this problem consists in using climbing robots for performing such dangerous tasks. This thesis presents the kinematic analysis and design of the HyReCRo robot (Hybrid Redundant Climbing Robot), a robot designed for climbing threedimensional metallic structures. This robot is redundant and has a hybrid architecture, since it is composed of four 2RPR-PR parallel mechanisms serially connected. The main characteristic of this robot is that it can be driven by binary actuators in order to get closer to the basic postures necessary for exploring three-dimensional structures (namely: convex and concave plane transitions), finely adjusting later the pose of its grippers by means of continuous actuation, in order to adhere its grippers to the climbed structure. This mixed binarycontinuous strategy facilitates the control and movement planning of the robot, which usually are very complex tasks in structure-climbing robots. The present thesis is focused on the study of the HyReCRo robot as a continuously-actuated robot, with the purpose of using mixed actuation strategies in the future. In the first place, this thesis presents a complete kinematic analysis of the HyReCRo robot and of the parallel mechanisms that make up its legs. Regarding the kinematic analysis of these parallel mechanisms, this thesis demonstrates that these mechanisms can enlarge their workspace by switching between different assembly modes without traversing singularities. This occurs when enclosing special isolated singularities which are fourfold solutions of the forward kinematic problem of these parallel mechanisms. Regarding the kinematic analysis of the complete HyReCRo robot, this thesis solves both its forward and inverse kinematic problems, obtaining simple parameterizations of the 4- and 5- dimensional self-motion manifolds of this robot. These kinematic analyses are performed with the help of PaRoLa, a collection of graphical simulators developed specifically in the present thesis with the purpose of facilitating the kinematic analysis of parallel robots. The present thesis also presents the study of the workspace of the HyReCRo robot, with the purpose of designing this robot so that it can perform convex and concave plane transitions required for exploring structures. As a result of this workspace analysis, this thesis proposes two new methods for obtaining the workspace of redundant robots, like the HyReCRo robot. |
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