HängMan

The HängMan project aims at a novel technical solution for maintenance and in-contact inspection of large-scale infrastructure and industrial facilities, which require an operation in hardly accessible areas in large height. While unmanned aerial vehicles are already in use for the contactless inspection tasks, there exists no widely applicable solution for manipulation tasks, which require a direct physical interaction in contact. The envisioned system consists of a motorized base unit equipped with propellers and a manipulator arm. The base is carried and roughly put in place at the required task location by an external crane system. Compared to conventional aerial systems, the proposed system can carry much higher loads and is able to exert high external forces onto the environment. The on-board propellers are utilized for stabilizing the undesired oscillation of the supported base and for fine positioning the system, while interaction forces due to the motion and manipulation of the manipulator are compensated. In the project, we will integrate a prototype of the system and evaluate the performance for precise positioning as well as for manipulation of the environment. Moreover, also the influence of external disturbances, such as wind, on the accuracy of the system shall be analyzed. The system will finally be tested in two example applications for inspection and maintenance. Possible application areas of the envisioned system lie in the maintenance, inspection, and repair of large-scale facilities in the oil and gas industry, the maintenance of windmills, bridge pillars, buildings, solar collectors, as well as in the maintenance of large-scale infrastructure of the energy sector. These applications require the use of well-trained personnel, such as industrial climbers, and therefore have high cost and time requirements.

Funding

The Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG)