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Design and performance of a slender soft continuum manipulator for tall structure inspection.

Purpose: The current methods for inspecting tall or deep structures such as towers, chimneys, silos, and wells suffer from certain constraints. Manual and assisted inspection methods including humans, drones, wall climbing robots, and others are either costly, have a limited operation time, or affec...

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Main Authors: Shoani, Mohamed Tahir, Ribuan, Mohamed Najib, Mohd. Faudzi, Ahmad 'Athif
Format: Article
Published: Emerald Publishing 2023
Subjects:
TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering
Online Access:http://eprints.utm.my/105020/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/IR-03-2023-0057
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spelling my.utm.1050202024-04-01T07:48:59Z http://eprints.utm.my/105020/ Design and performance of a slender soft continuum manipulator for tall structure inspection. Shoani, Mohamed Tahir Ribuan, Mohamed Najib Mohd. Faudzi, Ahmad 'Athif TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering Purpose: The current methods for inspecting tall or deep structures such as towers, chimneys, silos, and wells suffer from certain constraints. Manual and assisted inspection methods including humans, drones, wall climbing robots, and others are either costly, have a limited operation time, or affected by field conditions, such as temperature and radiation. This study aims to overcome the presented challenges through a teleoperated soft continuum manipulator capable of inspecting tall or deep structures with high resolution, an unlimited operation time and the ability to use different arms of the manipulator for different environments and structure sizes. Design/methodology/approach: The teleoperated manipulator uses one rotary and two tendon actuators to reach and inspect the interior of a tall (or deep) structure. A sliding part along the manipulator’s body (arm constrainer and tendon router) induces a variable-length bending segment, allowing an inspection camera to be placed at different distances from the desired location. Findings: The experiments confirmed the manipulator’s ability to inspect different locations in the structure’s interior. The manipulator also demonstrated a submillimeter motion resolution vertically and a 2.5 mm per step horizontally. The inspection time of the full structure was 48.53 min in the step-by-step mode and was calculated to be 4.23 min in the continuous mode. Originality/value: The presented manipulator offers several design novelties: the arm’s thin-wide cross-section, the variable-length bending segment in a fixed-length body, the external rolling tendon routing and the ability to easily replace the arm with another of different material or dimensions to suite different structures and environments. Emerald Publishing 2023-11-16 Article PeerReviewed Shoani, Mohamed Tahir and Ribuan, Mohamed Najib and Mohd. Faudzi, Ahmad 'Athif (2023) Design and performance of a slender soft continuum manipulator for tall structure inspection. Industrial Robot, 50 (6). pp. 944-958. ISSN 0143-991X http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/IR-03-2023-0057 DOI: 10.1108/IR-03-2023-0057
institution Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
building UTM Library
collection Institutional Repository
continent Asia
country Malaysia
content_provider Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
content_source UTM Institutional Repository
url_provider http://eprints.utm.my/
topic TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering
spellingShingle TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering
Shoani, Mohamed Tahir
Ribuan, Mohamed Najib
Mohd. Faudzi, Ahmad 'Athif
Design and performance of a slender soft continuum manipulator for tall structure inspection.
description Purpose: The current methods for inspecting tall or deep structures such as towers, chimneys, silos, and wells suffer from certain constraints. Manual and assisted inspection methods including humans, drones, wall climbing robots, and others are either costly, have a limited operation time, or affected by field conditions, such as temperature and radiation. This study aims to overcome the presented challenges through a teleoperated soft continuum manipulator capable of inspecting tall or deep structures with high resolution, an unlimited operation time and the ability to use different arms of the manipulator for different environments and structure sizes. Design/methodology/approach: The teleoperated manipulator uses one rotary and two tendon actuators to reach and inspect the interior of a tall (or deep) structure. A sliding part along the manipulator’s body (arm constrainer and tendon router) induces a variable-length bending segment, allowing an inspection camera to be placed at different distances from the desired location. Findings: The experiments confirmed the manipulator’s ability to inspect different locations in the structure’s interior. The manipulator also demonstrated a submillimeter motion resolution vertically and a 2.5 mm per step horizontally. The inspection time of the full structure was 48.53 min in the step-by-step mode and was calculated to be 4.23 min in the continuous mode. Originality/value: The presented manipulator offers several design novelties: the arm’s thin-wide cross-section, the variable-length bending segment in a fixed-length body, the external rolling tendon routing and the ability to easily replace the arm with another of different material or dimensions to suite different structures and environments.
format Article
author Shoani, Mohamed Tahir
Ribuan, Mohamed Najib
Mohd. Faudzi, Ahmad 'Athif
author_facet Shoani, Mohamed Tahir
Ribuan, Mohamed Najib
Mohd. Faudzi, Ahmad 'Athif
author_sort Shoani, Mohamed Tahir
title Design and performance of a slender soft continuum manipulator for tall structure inspection.
title_short Design and performance of a slender soft continuum manipulator for tall structure inspection.
title_full Design and performance of a slender soft continuum manipulator for tall structure inspection.
title_fullStr Design and performance of a slender soft continuum manipulator for tall structure inspection.
title_full_unstemmed Design and performance of a slender soft continuum manipulator for tall structure inspection.
title_sort design and performance of a slender soft continuum manipulator for tall structure inspection.
publisher Emerald Publishing
publishDate 2023
url http://eprints.utm.my/105020/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/IR-03-2023-0057
_version_ 1797905880539201536
score 13.211869

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