Motion planning and simulation of climbing robot for power plant pipeline

To meet the kinematic demands of climbing task along a straight pipe, between pipes or between calandria pipelines in a multipanel paralleled pipelines environment, a 5-DOF climbing robot was analyzed and developed for power plant detection. Firstly, based on the motion demand analysis, the climbing robot structure configuration was designed. Secondly, climbing motions along a straight pipe between pipes and between calandria pipelines were planned, and three kinds of gaits were proposed. Afterwards, the kinematical model was established by using the Denavit-Hartenberg method and inverse kinematics was used to solve the corresponding position joint angle. Then angle-time series were obtained by quintic polynomial interpolation method. Finally, energy consumption and the torque of joints during the climbing process were analyzed by virtual prototyping simulation based on ADAMS. The results show that the planned gait can meet the needs of movement. With the increase of step distance from 50 mm to 150 mm in the straight pipe climbing, the maximum torque of the robot increases by 17.76% and the total energy consumption reduces by 39.94%,energy can be saved by increasing step in case of sufficient torque. In each condition, the load of rotating joints in climbing between pipes and clamping claw in the climbing between pipe screen are the maximun, and they should be checked in gait optimization and prototype design. © 2018, Central South University Press. All right reserved.