MECHATRONICS DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT TOWARDS A HEAVY-DUTY WATERHDRAULIC WELDING/CUTTING ROBOT

ABSTRACT This paper presents a special robot, able to carry out welding and machining processes from inside the ITER vacuum vessel, consisting of a five-degree-of-freedom parallel mechanism mounted on a carriage driven by two electric motors on a rack. The kinematic design of the robot has been optimised for ITER access and a hydraulically actuated pre-prototype built. A hybrid controller is designed for the robot, including position, speed and pressure feedback loops to achieve high accuracy and high dynamic performances. Finally, the experimental tests are given and discussed.