Professional Documents
Culture Documents
=
8 9.81
1
= 78.48 kN/m.
To calculate the stiffness in the cooling phase (during which
material transitions from the austenite to the martensite phase),
we took a 230-mm (prestretched by 4 mm) long wire and xed
its one end in a bench-vice and applied 8-kg weight at the
other end. With a 2-V power supply, the ensuing current heats
up the wire and transforms it to austenite phase changing its
length to 226 mm. Then, we turned the power supply OFF. As a
result, austenite phase starts to transform into martensite phase.
Due to weight, the SMA wire again deformed in cooling phase
up to 229 mm. Therefore, the SMA wire deformed by 3 mm
256 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS, VOL. 29, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2013
Fig. 11. Schematic of experimental setup for SMA wire characterization.
in cooling phase. We repeated this experiment ve times and
found stiffness in the cooling phase to be 26.16 kN/m
K
Cooling Phase
=
L
=
8 9.81
3
= 26.16 kN/m
K
SMA CoolingPhase
< K
Compliant Mechanism
.
Now, to make the repetitive motion possible, the stiffness of
compliant ring should be greater than the stiffness of SMA wire
in the cooling phase. Only then, the compliant ring will stretch
the SMAwire back to the stressed state. The stiffness of the com-
pliant ring was calculated to be 69.11 kN/m by nite-element
simulation [see Fig. 7(b)]. This stiffness value is more than the
stiffness of the SMA wire in the cooling phase. Therefore, it
ensures repetitive cyclic motion.
C. Thermal Characterization of the Shape Memory Alloy Wire
It is important to understand the electrothermal behavior of
the SMA wire and the entire ring actuator. Two issues arise
here: 1) ensuring that the ring cools to room temperature within
reasonable time after one cycle of operation and 2) ensuring that
all SMA wires heat to 40
C transition temperature with 2 V.
For 1), we performed an experiment on the ring actuator and
the SMA wire and measured the temperatures. We used K-type
thermocouples to measure the temperature shown in Fig. 12(a).
The dotted line in the graph shows the temperature of the SMA
wire, while the other line shows the temperature of the spring-
steel portion. It can be noticed that it takes only about 1 s to heat,
while it takes 9 s to cool. Thus, it takes about 10 s to complete
a cycle. It is worth noting that it is the cooling time that decides
the overall cycle time. To make it faster than 10 s, one would
need to use a cooling mechanism such as a fan or Peltier cooler,
which comes at the expeese of more complexity.
To address the second issue, we performed 2-D transient
electrothermal modeling of SMA wire using CMOSOL Multi-
physics [www.comsol.com] to calculate the temperature prole
by applying 2-V electric potential. The temperature prole is
shown in Fig. 12(b) at time 2 s. It can be seen that the en-
tire wire reaches 40
C. This distribution continues to be so
when the voltage is sustained for longer time. Hence, all of the
SMA wire uniformly undergoes phase transition. The material
properties used in thermal modeling were thermal conductiv-
ity = 18 W/(mK), density = 6800 Kg/m
3
, and resistivity =
Fig. 12. (a) Temperature versus time in the experiment. (b) Temperature dis-
tribution of the SMA wire in its electrothermal modeling at time 2 s.
7.6e-7 m for the SMA wire. The two ends of the wire were
held at room temperature in this modeling, which is justiable
because the spring-steel portion does not heat much, as can be
seen in Fig. 12(a).
IV. CLAMP-AND-PUSH MOTION
As demonstrated in Fig. 13, the robot consists of two SMA-
actuated radially deployable compliant ring actuators, which are
labeled A and B.
In order to crawl to the left, ring B grips the pipe tightly and
stays unactuated, while ring A is actuated to release its grip.
The translation actuator pushes ring A closer to ring B. At this
stage, actuation to ring A is stopped, thus making it grip the
pipe again while ring B is released and translation actuators are
activated in reverse direction. Now, ring B is pushed to the left.
This constitutes one cycle and leads to a nite movement to the
right. By repeating this cycle, the device crawls over the pipe.
By reversing the roles of rings A and B in a cycle, the crawling
direction can be changed. This concept works for an internal
crawler too, but here we focus on only the external crawler
within limited space.
V. ELECTRONICS INTEGRATION
An electronic circuit is necessary to automate the robot. Elec-
tric current has to be supplied to actuate the two pairs of SMA
wires that help the gripping pads release their grip and the
translation actuators that connect the two ring actuators. This
requires a driver circuit to effect these actuations cyclically in a
SINGH AND ANANTHASURESH: COMPACT AND COMPLIANT EXTERNAL PIPE-CRAWLING ROBOT 257
Fig. 13. Schematic illustration of a clamp-and-push concept of a pipe crawler
robot.
sequence. As stated before, we had used SMAstrips and springs
for translation actuation [see Fig. 8(a) and (b)] which took a lot
of time to heat and cool. Therefore, we decided to change the
translation actuator to a geared DC motor with lead screw.
The current-driving circuit on a printed circuit board is used
to effect the cyclical operation of triggering the passage and
stoppage of current in the two pairs of SMA wires and one
set of translation actuators (shown in Fig. 14). The circuit has
ATMEL-made AVR microcontroller with three current sources
in parallel, as shown in Fig. 15.
A switched mode power supply (SMPS) of 400-W capac-
ity was taken from a personal computer to supply the current
needed for the SMAwires and translation actuators. The current
can be switched by the microcontroller and the value of current
can be set by the three potentiometers. High-power MOSFETs
(metaloxide eld-effect transistors) are used to get the current
loads needed for the actuators. The microcontroller is interfaced
by universal serial bus converter. A command-driven program
is used to set the various actuator timings to control the speed.
Fig. 14. Cyclic chart for the pipe crawler robot.
The sequence of the actuation is programmed into the micro-
controller so that switching of the actuators is automatic.
VI. PROTOTYPING AND ASSEMBLY
Compliant radially deployable mechanism was assembled
using two compliant rings, as shown in Fig. 16. The com-
pliant rings, as stated earlier, convert the circumferential
motion into radial motion. First, we designed a geometric
model of compliant rings in SolidWorks [www.solidworks.com]
and generated the machining codethe G-codefor wire-cut
electrodischarge-machining (EDM) using customized ELAPT
software. The compliant rings were made out of spring steel
(AISI 1080; EN 42 J) cut on a wire-cut EDM. Since the two
rings are in two different parallel planes, they were soft-soldered
at the gripping pads. Two NiTiCu SMAwires were connected
in between the compliant rings with the help of a plastic clip
and a brass crimpable tube. The SMA wires were connected in
opposite directions. The insulating rollers on which the SMA
wire sits can be seen in Fig. 17 along with the other parts. In-
sulating acrylic rollers were made on the CO
2
laser machine.
To increase the friction coefcient between the pipe and grip-
ping pads, a butyl layer of 1-mm thickness was afxed onto the
gripping pads. A full assembly of SMA-actuated ring actuator
is shown in Fig. 17.
The electronics unit was packaged into a custom-designed
box, as shown in Fig. 18. The complete prototype of the crawl-
ing robot is shown in Fig. 17. Two SMA-actuated radially de-
ployable compliant mechanism rings are attached to each other
by translating DC actuator. The translation actuator consists of
three parts: DC motor, gear box, and lead screw. When the po-
tential is applied, the motor rotates, and the gear box reduces the
speed of the motor by 1:100 and the lead screw with a nut that
transmits the force on the compliant mechanism ring to move
relative to each other.
258 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS, VOL. 29, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2013
Fig. 15. Electronic schematic diagram for cyclic operation of the robot.
VII. TESTING AND RESULTS
Fig. 19 shows the test setup of SMA-actuated radial deploy-
able compliant ring actuator. The setup shows the ring actuator
put on a pipe that is set vertically. Since the outer diameter
of the pipe is larger than the diameter of the circle passing
through the four clamping points, there is a gripping force of
1.8 N (per clamping pad) applied on the pipe, as calculated by
the nite-element simulation in ABAQUS. With 2-V potential,
the ring loosens the grip on the pipe because of the radially
outward movement of the gripping pads. This experiment was
done 20 times to calculate the deformation in the clamping pads
without mounting it on the pipe. The maximum deformation
on one clamping pad was 1.2 mm with a standard deviation of
0.02 mm. When we look at the movement of all four pads, there
is about 2.4-mm change in the diameter of the circle passing
through the outer edges of the gripping pads in the unactuated
and actuated congurations.
Fig. 16. SMA-actuated radial deployable compliant ring actuator.
Fig. 17. Complete prototype of the crawling robot.
Fig. 18. Electronic control system for pipe crawler.
Fig. 19. Test setup for the actuator (a) at 0 V. The pipe is tightly gripped
against gravity (b) at 1.35 V; the ring got released and fell down.
SINGH AND ANANTHASURESH: COMPACT AND COMPLIANT EXTERNAL PIPE-CRAWLING ROBOT 259
Fig. 20. Demonstration of pipe crawler robot in horizontal pipe.
Fig. 21. Demonstration of pipe crawler robot on a pipe set at 30
incline.
Figs. 20 and 21 show the test setup of the pipe crawler robot.
The setup shows the robot put on a pipe that is set horizontal
and at 30