Tracked-wheel crawler robot for vertically aligned mooring chain climbing design, simulation and validation of a climbing robot for mooring chains
- Resource Type
- Conference
- Authors
- Dissanayake, Mahesh; Sattar, Tariq P.; Howlader, Omar; Pinson, Ivan; Gan, Tat-Hean
- Source
- 2017 IEEE International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems (ICIIS) Industrial and Information Systems (ICIIS), 2017 IEEE International Conference on. :1-6 Dec, 2017
- Subject
- Bioengineering
Communication, Networking and Broadcast Technologies
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Computing and Processing
Fields, Waves and Electromagnetics
Photonics and Electrooptics
Power, Energy and Industry Applications
Robotics and Control Systems
Signal Processing and Analysis
Crawlers
Adhesives
Magnetic flux
Inspection
Solid modeling
Climbing robots
Mooring chain inspection
Chain Climbing Robot
Crawler Robot
Magnetic adhesion crawler
- Language
Only a few attempts have been made to investigate the possibilities of developing chain climbing robot due to the complexity of the structure and physical nature of chain links. Mooring chains are subjected to large tidal waves, harsh environmental conditions and storms on a daily basis. Therefore, periodic inspection of the integrity of chain links is important. Work reported in this paper investigates the possibilities of mooring chain climbing by using tracked wheel locomotion. The permanent magnet adhesion, tracked wheel crawler robot developed for this purpose can climb on mooring chains both in air and underwater with a variable speed according to the inspection requirements (maximum speed of 42cm/minute). It is able to handle an external downward force of 50N during the climbing motion. Numerical modelling based analysis of a magnet adhesion module and the strength of the robot structure is validated with prototyping and testing of the concept.