Ultra-smart manipulator design for propeller-cleaning robots

A hyper-dexterous manipulator (HDM) cleaning device, mounted on an underwater adsorption robot, was designed to address the complications of cleaning the space structure surface on ship propellers. The HDM mechanical structure was constructed by exploiting the high degrees of freedom associated with skeleton-like biological muscle. Considering the characteristics of high-pressure water jet, Hooke's hinge was used to replace flexible components at joints. Kinematics and inverse kinematics modeling of the singleended manipulator was performed using the geometric analysis method wherein a manipulator model based on the assumption of equal arcs was obtained from a multi-joint connecting rod transformation. Then, a mapping relation between the multi-joint drive space and the operation space was derived. The comparison of simulated experiments to physical results reveals that the robot arm design achieves the desired operating position and robustness can be guaranteed during the loading experiment.