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The purpose of this paper is to discuss motion planning about crossing obstacles and welding trajectory for a new-model mobile obstacle-crossing welding robot system. The robot can cross the obstacle in this way that one of the three adhesion mobile parts is pulled off the ground in turn. An optimal obstacle-crossing approach needs to be studied to improve the welding efficiency.

According to the characteristics of this mobile welding robot, two methods for crossing obstacles are compared. A special method is used for obstacle-crossing and welding. The kinematic model is established. By the optimization method, the optimum parameters for crossing obstacles are calculated. The welding speed when the robot is crossing the obstacle is very important, so its value must be in a certain range. Finally, the tracks of the wheels when the robot is crossing the obstacle are analyzed in order to observe the obstacle-crossing process.

According to the analysis, the maximum speed of the vehicle in the obstacle-crossing is determined. When crossing the obstacle, the robot can do welding simultaneously. The welding speed cannot exceed a certain value. In the obstacle-crossing process, the tracks of the wheels can reflect the process. According to the obtained conclusion, the obstacle-crossing experiments are successfully completed, and the welding effect is good. The results can prove that the proposed method is feasible.

The speed of obstacle-crossing is not very large. It has some relationships with the lifting speed of the wheels, which is determined by the quality of drive motor. More efficient robot must be developed to meet the needs of industrial robot.

Based on the excellent obstacle-crossing and welding capabilities, the robot with the new mechanism has a widely applying prospect in the field of welding and inspecting large equipment.

The obstacle-crossing approach has certain innovation. The way that the robot can maintain continuous welding when crossing the obstacle is of a great significance.

The rope-climbing robot that can cling to a rope for locomotion has been a popular piece of equipment for some overhead applications due to its high flexibility. In view of problems left by existing rope-climbing robots, this paper aims to propose a new-style rope-climbing robot named Finger-wheeled mechanism robot (FWMR)-II to improve their performance.

FWMR-II adopts a modular and link-type mechanical structure. With the finger-wheeled mechanism (FWM) module, the robot can achieve smooth and quick locomotion and good capability of obstacle-crossing on the rope and with the link module based on a spatial parallel mechanism, the robot adaptability for rope environments is improved further. The kinematic models that can present configurations of the FWM module and link module of the robot are established and for typical states of the obstacle-crossing process, the geometric definitions and constraints that can present the robot position relative to the rope are established. The simulation is performed with the optimization calculating method to obtain the robot adaptability for rope environments and the experiment is also conducted with the developed prototype to verify the robot performance.

From the simulation results, the adaptability for rope environments of FWMR-II are obtained and the advantage of FWMR-II compared with FWMR-I is also proved. The experiment results give a further verification for the robot design and analysis work.

The robot proposed in this study can be used for inspection of power transmission lines, inspection and delivery in mine and some other overhead applications.

An ingenious modular link-type robot is proposed to improve existing rope-climbing robots and the method established in this study is worthy of reference for obstacle-crossing analysis of other rope-climbing robots.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a robot mechanism designed for power transmission line inspection. The focus for this design is on obstacle-crossing ability with a goal to create a robot moving and crossing obstacle on not only the straight line but also the steering line.

A novel four-unit tri-arm serial robot mechanism is proposed. Every novel unit designed for pitching motion is based on parallelogram structure, which is driven by cables and only one motor. There is gripper-wheel compounding mechanism mounted on the arm. The prototype and obstacle environments are established, and the obstacle-crossing experiments are conducted.

The novel unit mechanism and robot prototype have been tested in the lab. The prototype has demonstrated the obstacle-crossing ability when moving and crossing fundamental obstacles on the line. The experimental results show that the robot mechanism meets the obstacle-crossing requirements.

The novel robot technology can be used for defect inspection of power transmission line by power companies.

It stands to lower the intense and risk of inspection works and reduce the costs related to inspection.

Innovative features include its architecture, mobility and driving method.

For the climbing rod object with large diameter variation and the need of obstacle crossing, this paper aims to propose a new embracing-type climbing robot named as EVOC-I robot.

The design philosophy and structural scheme are introduced. The kinematic analysis of embracing and telescoping mechanisms is carried out to provide the theoretical foundation for the effective climbing of the robot. Based on the prototype robot, three preliminary experiments are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the designed robot.

The theoretical and experimental analyses have verified the reasonability and effectiveness of the proposed robot design.

As the preliminary study, the prototype still need a lot of improvement. The experimental verification is also limited. Future work will focus on improving the design and increasing the theoretical analysis, especially increasing experimental study and designing the next generation of the rod climbing robot.

The designed climbing robot can be used for climbing the rod with variation diameter and flange obstacle, especially the lightening rod in the transformer substation.

The paper designs a new climbing robot that integrates the ability of large variation diameter adaptation and obstacle crossing.

The purpose of this paper is to design a climbing robot connected by a connecting rod mechanism to achieve multi-functional tasks such as obstacles crossing and climbing of power transmission towers.

A connecting rod type gripper has been designed to achieve stable grasping of angle steel. Before grasping, use coordination between structures to achieve stable docking and grasping. By using the alternating movements of two claws and the middle climbing mechanism, the climbing and obstacle crossing of the angle steel were achieved.

Through a simple linkage mechanism, a climbing robot has been designed, greatly reducing the overall mass of the robot. It can also carry a load of 1 kg, and the climbing mechanism can perform stable climbing. The maximum step distance of the climbing robot is 543 mm, which can achieve the crossing of angle steel obstacles.

A transmission tower climbing mechanism was proposed by analyzing the working environment. Through the locking ability of the screw nut, stable clamping of the angle steel is achieved, and a pitch mechanism is designed to adjust the posture of the hand claw.

With the development of automation technology, the accuracy, bearing capacity and self-adaptation requirements of wheeled mobile robots are more and more demanding under various complex conditions, which will urge designers such shortcomings as the low accuracy, poor flexibility and weak obstacle crossing ability of traditional heavy haul vehicles and improve the wear resistance and bearing capacity of traditional omnidirectional wheels.

The optimal configuration for heavy payload transportation is obtained by building sliding friction consumption model of traditional wheels with different driving types based on Hertz tangential contact theory. The heavy payload omnidirectional wheel with a double-wheel steering and a coupled differential wheel driving is designed with the optimal configuration. The wheel consists of a differential gear train unit and a nonindependent suspension unit. Kinematics model of the wheel is established and relative parameters are optimized.

The prototype experiments show that the wheel has higher motion accuracy and environment adaptability. The results are consistent with the theoretical calculation, which show that the accuracy is more than 50% higher than that of differential prototype. The motion stability and the accuracy of the coupled differential omnidirectional wheel are better than those of the traditional omnidirectional wheels during the moving and obstacle crossing process under complex conditions, which verifies the correctness and advantages of the design.

Aiming at the specific application of heavy payload omnidirectional transportation, a new omnidirectional mobile mechanism with a two-wheel coupling drive structure and an adaptive mechanism is proposed. The simulation and experimental results show that it can realize the high-precision heavy-load omnidirectional movement, the effective contact with the ground and improve the adaptability to the rugged ground. It is flexible, simple and modular and can be widely applied to transportation, exploration, detection and other related industrial fields.

The purpose of this paper is that the modular mobile robots reformed the multimachine joint mode to achieve obstacle-crossing, climbing and other multifunctional inspection in unstructured environment under the connection of the cone–hole docking mechanism.

An arc-shaped docking cone head with a posture-maintaining spring and two arc-shaped connecting rods that formed a ring round hole were designed to achieve large tolerance docking. Before active locking, the coordination between structures was used to achieve passive locking, which mitigated the docking impact of modular robots in unstructured environment. Using the locking ring composed of the two arc-shaped connecting rods, open-loop and closed-loop motion characteristics were obtained through the mutual motion of the connecting rod and the sliding block to achieve active locking, which not only ensured high precision docking, but also achieved super docking stability.

The cone–hole docking mechanism had the docking tolerance performance of position deviation of 6mm and pitch deviation of 8° to achieve docking of six degrees of freedom (6-DOF), which had a load capacity of 230 N to achieve super docking stability. Under the connection of the cone–hole docking mechanism, the modular mobile robots reformed the multimachine joint mode to achieve obstacle-crossing, climbing and other multifunctional inspection in unstructured environment.

Based on mechanical analysis of universal models, a cone–hole docking mechanism combining active and passive functions, six-dimensional constraints could be implemented, was proposed in this paper. The characteristics of the posture-maintaining spring in the cone docking head and the compression spring at the two ends of two arc-shaped connecting rods were used to achieve docking with large tolerance. Passive locking and active locking modules were designed, mitigating impact load and the locking did not require power to maintain, which not only ensured high precision docking, but also achieved super docking stability.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a multipurpose inspection robot that can both walk on the ground and climb on poles. The structure design, size optimization, kinematics analysis, experiment and arithmetic of the robot are discussed in the paper.

The robot consists of three adjustable modules and a two-degree-of-freedom parallel mechanism in tandem, and the wheel-finger mechanism of each module can realize wheel-finger opening and closing for fast movement and obstacle crossing. This paper uses geometric analysis and simulation analysis to derive size optimization, and vector coordinate method to derive kinematics. Finally, the experiment is carried out by simulating the working environment of the robot.

The robot can realize ground walking and ground turning through the robot entity prototype experiment on the built working environment and efficiently realize 0°–90° pole climbing by the assemble design, optimization and machining. In addition, the robot can also smoothly complete the state transition process from 0° ground to 90° pole climbing. Furthermore, the robot shows good environmental self-adaptation and can complete daily inspection work.

The robot can pitch and yaw at a large angle and has six-legged characteristics. It is a multipurpose inspection robot that can walk on the ground and climb on poles. And through structure design, size optimization, kinematics analysis and simulation, the existing robots’ common shortcomings such as poor barrier-crossing ability and poor environmental adaptability are solved.

Field robots can surmount or avoid some obstacles when operating on rough ground. However, cable-climbing robots can only surmount obstacles because their moving path is completely restricted along the cables. This paper aims to analyse the dynamic obstacle-surmounting models for the driving and driven wheels of the climbing mechanism, and design a mechanical structure for a bilateral-wheeled cable-climbing robot to improve the obstacle crossing capability.

A mechanical structure of the bilateral-wheeled cable-climbing robot is designed in this paper. Then, the kinematic and dynamic obstacle-surmounting of the driven and driving wheels are investigated through static-dynamic analysis and Lagrangian mechanical analysis, respectively. The climbing and obstacle-surmounting experiments are carried out to improve the obstacle crossing capability. The required motion curve, speed and driving moment of the robot during obstacle-surmounting are generated from the experiments results.

The presented method offers a solution for dynamic obstacle-surmounting analysis of a bilateral-wheeled cable-climbing robot. The simulation, laboratory testing and field experimental results prove that the climbing capability of the robot is near-constant on cables with diameters between 60 and 205 mm.

The dynamic analysis method presented in this paper is found to be applicable to rod structures with large obstacles and improved the stability of the robot at high altitude. Simulations and experiments are also conducted for performance evaluation.

This paper aims to design a walking-clamp mechanism for the inspection robot of transmission line. The focus for this design is on climbing ability and obstacle-crossing ability with a goal to create a novel walking-clamp mechanism that can clamp not only the line but also the obstacle.

A novel clamping jaw used in the walking-clamp mechanism is proposed. The clamping wheel is mounted on the lower end of clamping jaw to reduce the friction between the clamping jaw and the line, and the top end of clamping jaw is designed as a hook structure to clamp the obstacle. The working principle and force states of the walking-clamp mechanism clamping the line and obstacle are analyzed, and the simulation and prototype experiments are carried out.

The experimental results show that this mechanism can clamp the obstacle steadily, and the clamping forces of the front and back pairs of clamping jaws are almost equal during robot walking along the catenary-shaped line. It is in agreement with the theoretical analysis, and it demonstrates that this mechanism can meet the working requirements of inspection robot.

This novel mechanism can be used for inspection robot of transmission line, and it is beneficial for robot to complete long-distance inspection works.

It stands to reduce costs related to inspection and improve the inspection efficiency.

Innovative features include its structure, working principle and force states.