Development of An Advanced Servo Manipulator For Remote Handling in Nuclear Installations
Development of An Advanced Servo Manipulator For Remote Handling in Nuclear Installations
Development of An Advanced Servo Manipulator For Remote Handling in Nuclear Installations
Mr
echnical
Mr.. D.D. Ray is the recipient of the DAE Scientific and TTechnical
Excellence Award for the year 2008
Abstract
Remotisation plays a vital role in all nuclear installations. Availability of reliable remote handling gadgets in nuclear
installations ensures higher productivity as well as safety. Division of Remote Handling & Robotics has recently developed
an Advanced Servo Manipulator (ASM) based on in house mechanical design and indigenous drives and controllers. The
ASM represents a new generation of remote handling technology with features like Force Feedback, Indexing, Soft Joint
limits, Artificial Force Feedback etc. This paper discusses about the design and implementation of the control system for
the ASM. This system is based on a tightly coupled distributed digital micro-processing technique. The ASM will ensure
higher safety, productivity, as well as better operator assistance.
Index Terms - Control system, Manipulator, Motor drives, Position control, Remote handling.
Introduction
Remotisation plays a vital role in all nuclear installations.
Plants using thorium-based fuels introduce additional
problems in remote handling, due to build up of
radioactivity in the U-232 decay chain. In such plants,
operators can handle the material only behind thick shields,
October 2010
53
DAE
Excellence Awards
BARC Newsletter
DAE
Excellence Awards
BARC Newsletter
Degrees of freedom
Payload
Maximum reach
1.2 m
Gripper opening
100 mm
of the control system for the ASM. This system has been
designed to support all the advanced features mentioned
Hardware implementation
54
October 2010
BARC Newsletter
DAE
Excellence Awards
Motor Drive
Table II: Servo Drive Specifications
500 Hz.
5/10 KHz.
6s
70 KHz
5 A(750W)
15 A
115.2 KBPS
Power Section
October 2010
55
DAE
Excellence Awards
BARC Newsletter
56
October 2010
BARC Newsletter
DAE
Excellence Awards
Joint Controller
There are seven joint controllers, one for each masterslave joint pair of the ASM. A joint controller exchanges
information between the servo drives of the corresponding
joints in real time. In addition to this, it supports indexing,
joint alignment, brake control and fault protection. Fig. 9
shows the hardware block diagram of the joint controller.
Operator Interface
The input devices for the ASM are the master arm, master
key pad, keyboard and mouse. Output devices for the
operator are slave arm, monitor and speaker. Fig. 10 shows
the photograph of the keypad which is mounted on the
master handgrip. It has keys for selecting force feedback
ratio, torque limits, individual joint for indexing and starting
Software Features
October 2010
57
DAE
Excellence Awards
BARC Newsletter
58
October 2010
BARC Newsletter
DAE
Excellence Awards
Conclusion
The development of the ASM as described above has
resulted in achieving a milestone in remote handling
technology thereby ensuring higher safety & productivity.
The electronics hardware are undergoing qualification tests
as per IEC 61800-2 & 61800-3 standards. The development
strategy was based on in-house mechanical design and
indigenously developed control hardware and software.
The ASM has flexible and expandable features for further
enhancement and customization. The futuristic concepts
like teach & playback mode, autonomous mode,
constrained motion, tremor removal etc. are also under
development. These features will help the slave arm to
perform autonomously without the intervention of the
October 2010
59
BARC Newsletter
DAE
Excellence Awards
References
Papers from Conference Proceedings
(Published):
1. W.R. Hamel and M.J. Feldman, The Advancement
of Remote Systems Technology: Past perspectives and
Future plans, in Proc. 1984 National Topical
Meeting on Robotics and Remote Handling in Hostile
Environments, pp. 11-23.
2. D.P. Kuban and H.L. Martin, An Advanced Remotely
Maintainable Force Reflecting Ser vo Manipulator
Concept, in Proc. 1984 National Topical Meeting
on Robotics and Re mote Handling in Hostile
Environments, pp. 407-415.
60
October 2010