Design and Development of a Reconfigurable Type Autonomous Sewage Cleaning Mobile Manipulator.

Abstract: The advances in robotics, in the last ten years, have enabled robot technology to solve many practical problems that humans encounter in day-to-day activities. But, even today manual scavenging of the sewage is practiced in urban areas of India, wherein man enter the manholes and clean the scales and clogs in the sewage pipelines manually with virtually no technical equipment. This practice might jeopardize the lives of humans; therefore, a sewage cleaning robot is essential to replace the human intervention. The conventional sewage cleaning robots available are not capable and effective in cleaning a variable diameter pipelines. In order to overcome this issue, an attempt has been is made to design and develop a reconfigurable type sewage cleaning mobile manipulator, which can efficiently clean the scales and clogs formed in the variable diameter sewage pipeline. A conceptual model of the manipulator has been created in solid model using solid works. It will give a clear understanding of the manipulator and its subsystem interactions. A prototype model of the manipulator has been developed based on the design concept and its working environment i. e, various goals that robot has to do after entering the sewage pipe and hence the functional requirements are finalized. It consists of various links and joints. The joints are drive through the various motors which are discussed in the paper. Preliminary investigations are carried out on the developed prototype model and some of the results are discussed in the paper. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]