The Journal of Korea Robotics Society (로봇학회논문지)

Korea Robotics Society (한국로봇학회)
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Experimental Study on an Underwater Pole Climb Robot for the Maintenance of Offshore Wind Turbine Substructures

해상풍력발전 지지구조물의 유지보수용 수중 기둥등반로봇에 관한 실험적 연구

  • Im, Eun Cheol (Center for Intelligent and Interactive Robotics, Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST)) ;
  • Ko, Jin Hwan (Mechanical System Engineering, Jeju National University)
  • Received : 2022.02.25
  • Accepted : 2022.03.22
  • Published : 2022.05.31
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Abstract

Maintenance works of offshore wind turbines could take a longer time, which causes the reduction of their energy production efficiency, than those of onshore wind turbines owing to severe offshore environment. Subsequently, preventive maintenance measures are required to increase the production efficiency. Thus, we proposed a wheel-based Underwater Pole Climbing Robot (UPCR) platform, which was aimed at the periodic inspection and maintenance of the substructures of the offshore wind turbines, with three advantages: high speed, good mobility and low power consumption. In the proposed platform, a self-locking system using a gripper module was adopted for preventing slippery problem and a dual configuration was chosen for moving on a branched structure. As a result, the proposed robot was able to continuously climb, preserve it's position at the pole without consuming energy, and move from the pole to the other branched pole. The results of this research show that the UPCR has basic moving capabilities required for the underwater work for the substructures of the offshore wind turbines.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by the 2022 scientific promotion program funded by Jeju National University

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