Field repair and construction of large hydropower equipment with a portable robot

摘要

Abstract Field repair work on large hydropower equipment is rarely automated due to the high complexity of the task. Generally, the work is done manually or the equipment is dismantled and repaired off site at greatly added cost and time. This paper surveys work carried out with the SCOMPI robot in the field on large hydropower equipment. SCOMPI is a small, portable, multiprocess, track‐based robot. This paper is the continuation of another paper in which the fundamentals of the robot technology are described in greater detail. Over the past 15 years, SCOMPIs have been extensively employed for a variety of field applications on equipment such as turbines, head gates, spillway gates, and penstocks. Initially designed to repair cavitation damage to turbines, the robots are now applied to reinforce turbines or to improve their performance in terms of efficiency. More recently, they have been used for the refurbishment of gates and for the construction of penstocks. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.