Switching Motion Control of the Climbing Robot for Aircraft Skin Inspection

Abstract

In this paper, a climbing robot for aircraft skin inspection with the inner frame and outer frame is developed. The climbing robot carrying a CCD camera can stably adsorb and move on the aircraft surface. The switching motion analysis of the inner frame and outer frame for the climbing robot is given. Motion constraint and dynamics equation are derived. The pneumatic system is designed and used to control the cylinders and suckers. An absorption force control scheme based on a fuzzy control and a feed-forward compensation control using least squares support vector regression(LS-SVR) prediction model is proposed to adjust the pressure difference in the suckers. This fuzzy control ensures that the stable absorption force is maintained even if some disturbance and noises exist. The switching motion and absorption force experiments are carried out and the results of the image inspection show the good performance of non-destructive inspection on airplane.