Published June 2023
| public
Journal Article
Mechanical Design, Planning, and Control for Legged Robots in Distillation Columns
Abstract
Dexterous robots have great potential to execute industrial tasks that are not suited to humans. In this work, a novel robotic mobility platform is proposed for use in the chemical industry to enable autonomous distillation column inspection—a tedious and dangerous task for humans. A roller arm mechanism is designed for a quadrupedal robot that enables moving across the distillation column. Required dynamic behaviors are generated with full-body motion planning and low-level control. The holistic process of mechanical design, planning, and control leads to desired behavior, as demonstrated by high-fidelity simulations. This marks a key step toward operating legged robots inside distillation columns.
Additional Information
© 2023 ASME. Paper No: CND-22-1157. We would like to thank Lyle McCarty, Twain Pigott, and Marty Robinson from Dow for their insights into distillation column inspection, providing column specifications, and for useful discussions. We would also like to thank Havel Liu from University of Michigan for his great effort and contribution in hardware design and Jay Jasper, Robert Hewitt, and Sarah Etter from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory for their valuable ideas and feedback. The research was in part carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004). Funding Data: Dow Chemical Company (Award ID: #227027AT; Funder ID: 10.13039/100004341).Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 122234
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20230711-988247900.6
- 80NM0018D0004
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- 227027AT
- Dow Chemical Company
- Created
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2023-07-25Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-07-25Created from EPrint's last_modified field