Abstract of Thesis presented at COPPE/UFRJ as a partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science (M.Sc.)

Modeling, Control and Electromechanical Design of a Modular Lightweight Manipulator for Interaction and Inspection Tasks

Marco Fernandes dos Santos Xaud

March/2016

Advisors:

Ramon Romankevicius Costa Antonio Candea Leite

Department:

Eletrical Engineering

      Robots have been increasing their potential to overcome several problems found in industry, including process safety, personnel health, efficiency and productiveness. Many O&G companies already use automated solutions, but recently, robotic manipulators have been drawing more attention, since they can perform specific tasks that require complex environment interaction. In spite of the available commercial models, occasionally, the development of an own and dedicated arm is motivated by project constraints and reduced budget. This work presents the electromechanical design and control of a lightweight manipulator for DORIS system, which is a rail-guided robot in development stage for monitoring and inspection of offshore facilities. DORIS arm is meant to pose autonomously a vibration sensor in contact with platform nearby equipment, interact with touchscreen panels and movement a small camera to obtain different sights of the platform. For this, hybrid force/position and kinematic control strategies are combined and simulated in computing environment. Further, modifications in the original kinematic structure and control laws are proposed, aiming to deal with kinematic singularities, and minimize energy consumption using the Filtered Inverse method.