A new six-parallel-legged walking robot for drilling holes on the fuselage

Abstract

In this paper, a new kind of six-parallel-legged robot is presented. It is designed for drilling holes on the aircraft surface. Each leg of the robot is a 3-DOF parallel mechanism with three chains: 1UP and 2UPS. The three prismatic joints are active joints and can be controlled either by position or by force. First, the task process and the gait plan are discussed and then, according to the requirement, the control method is introduced. After that, the mechanism topology patterns under different working conditions are studied and the control mode of each motor is determined. Then the kinematical model is built up, based on which the position control curves can be obtained. The simulation result shows that the robot can walk pretty well on the fuselage surface and that the actuation forces are quite smooth. Furthermore, the first prototype has been manufactured and some experiments such as walking and manipulation have been done.