An Adsorption Machining Robot and Its Force Design

Machining robots have great advantages in large structure components manufacture and maintenance due to their flexibility and low cost. Among them, adsorption robots have the potentials to reach the blind areas of the large-scale structure. But the complex force interaction problem and high requirement of processing quality during machining make the robot design become a very challenging problem. This study proposes an adsorption machining robot consisted of end-effector and omnidirectional adsorption mobile platform. The friction adsorption locking device and elevating omnidirectional wheel are designed to satisfy the high machining quality. The driving force and adsorption force matching design is presented to make the robot capable of climbing on low friction coefficient surface. This design can increase twice robot’s climbing ability from 5° to 10° by providing extra adsorption force. The results in this paper are helpful to the development of the robot.