A Semi-Autonomous Robot for Stripping Paint from Large Vessels

Abstract

The National Robotics Engineering Consortium and UltraStrip Systems Inc. have developed a highly flexible and productive robot to strip paint from large ships and other large ferro-magnetic structures based on the patents obtained by UltraStrip Systems, Inc. (US patents: 6,425,340; 5,849,099; 5,628,271). Removal of corrosion and coatings from large vessels has become a serious economic and environmental problem, and current practices are becoming infeasible. The M2000 robot removes paint from ships using ultrahigh pressure water jets and recovers the water and debris in an environmentally sound way. The addition of simple, easy-to-use, cruise control features to the robot has permitted significant increases in productivity, safety, and stripping quality.

Design of permanent magnetic wheel-type adhesion-locomotion system for water-jetting wall-climbing robot

“…Moreover, the manual surface-maintenance operation has other critical shortcomings, such like limited maneuverability, poor operating quality, low operating efficiency, and high risk of physical harm. [5][6][7][8][9] Additionally, in some cases like nuclear industry and chemical industry, the working environments could cause serious harm to operator's health. [10][11][12] Therefore, developing a wallclimbing robot to carry out surface-maintenances of high structures with high efficiency, low cost and good protection of operators is extremely necessary.…”

“…Technologies of wall-climbing robots have been researched for a few decades. [5][6][7][8][9] Considering the high working surfaces, adhesion-locomotion system plays an important role in a wall-climbing robot. On one hand, it provides an adhesive force to produce enough friction for sustaining the weight of robot and payloads, which should not be too great to make robot stuck in place or locomotion jerkily.…”

“…Without magnetic flux concentrator, quite a part of magnetic flux leaks into the air, which is still not good enough for getting a large adhesive force with a lightweight magnet. To solve this problem, Ross et al 5 arranged permanent magnets in a Halbach array. This array can form a one-sided strong magnetic field and then produce a large adhesive force.…”

A self stabilizing underwater sub-surface inspection robot using hydrodynamic ground effect

“…Most are tethered which can lead to snagging in a cluttered environment. Other robots involved in ship hull inspection or maintenance are usually crawlers or wheeled and uses magnets to ensure contacts [19] [20]. These robots are generally large and propelled by powerful actuators.…”

Analysis on Turning Stress States of Magnetic Sucking Mechanism Unit of a Large Load Wall Climbing Robot

“…The main function of WCRSRR is boarding a rust cleaner, which is a mechanical disc and can directly remove rust on the surface of hull wall by ultra-high pressure water. The rust cleaner can flush, scrub, scrape the wall surface and collect sewage automatically [1].…”