Novel Aerial Manipulator for Accurate and Robust Industrial NDT Contact Inspection: A New Tool for the Oil and Gas Inspection Industry.
Sensors (Basel)
; 19(6)2019 Mar 15.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-30875905
ABSTRACT
There is a strong demand in the oil and gas industry to develop alternatives to manual inspection. This paper presents AeroX, a novel aerial robotic manipulator that provides physical contact inspection with unprecedented capabilities. AeroX has a semi-autonomous operation, which provides interesting advantages in contact inspection. In the free-flight mode, the pilot guides the robot until performing contact with its end-effector on the surface to be inspected. During contact, AeroX is in its fully-autonomous global navigation satellite system (GNSS)-free contactâ»flight mode, in which the robot keeps its relative position w.r.t. the surface contact point using only its internal sensors. During autonomous flight, the inspector can move-with uninterrupted contact-the end-effector on the surface for accurately selecting the points where to perform A-scan measurements or continuous B-scan or C-scan inspections. AeroX adopts an eight-tilted rotor configuration and a simple and efficient design, which provides high stability, maneuverability, and robustness to rotor failure. It can perform contact inspection on surfaces at any orientation, including vertical, inclined, horizontal-top or horizontal-bottom, and its operation can be easily integrated into current maintenance operations in many industries. It has been extensively validated in outdoor experiments including a refinery and has been awarded the EU Innovation Radar Prize 2017.
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MEDLINE
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2019
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Article