Design and Analysis of the Spray-Painting Robot for Tower

Abstract

The Telecommunication industry plays an important role across the globe for social communication, national security, and connectivity for 24x7x365. Considering most of the cases for maintenance of the telecom towers, the conventional methods are used for maintenance work. Generally, highly certified riggers (human laborers) are being sent on the towers for maintenance purposes risking their lives in danger. As robotics has found its application in both structured and unstructured environments but still there some sectors it requires to do automation it involves the telecommunication industry. But there are some hazardous incidents are occurring on telecommunication sites while performing maintenance of telecommunication towers. Due to COVID-19 online culture is developed due to which payload is also increasing turns in increment of maintenance work Also, the rate of accidents and subsequent work on height hazards increase. The maintenance involves inspection, antenna erection, antenna painting, to check the proper connections, etc but spray- painting of telecommunication antennas are distinctive representatives of the thesis. The Foremost aim is to design a manipulator for spray painting of an antenna; which should be light in weight as it will be mounted on the top of the structure climbing robot and can be easily accommodated within the workspace of the tower. While designing the manipulator design considerations, the actuation of the manipulator, material selection is the important parameters. The robotic manipulator of 6 kgs with RRRP configuration i.e., four degrees of freedom, with Acrylic; the plastic alloy as the material is designed in Solidworks2021. Denavit-Hartenberg algorithm for link and joint is used to prepare the direct or inverse kinematic model for the robotic manipulator. By establishing the rigid body tree model in Robotics System Toolbox, the numerical model of direct and inverse kinematics using Homogenous Matrix Transformation is prepared in MATLAB as it is tedious equations to solve analytically. Through the spray patch method and offline programming method, the spray model is prepared in Solidowoks2021 by giving the input variables appropriately and obtain the waypoints. Through the Joint Space Technique, the B-spline trajectory is generated through these waypoints where at each waypoint joint displacement variables are obtained with the help of inverse kinematic model in Robotics System Toolbox, MATLAB. With the help of the airless spray gun which will be clamped and it will be controlled with the help of PLC. Electrical Motors are controlled with the help of the Arduino which will be operated through Wi-Fi, camera vision, and the teach-pendant motion can be controlled. Therefore, kinematic analysis and trajectory generation fulfil the aim of the spray-painting of the antenna. Thus, the simulation of the manipulator shows that it follows the defined trajectory properly.