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Article history:
Received 17 January 2013
Received in revised form
13 February 2014
Accepted 26 February 2014
Available online 20 March 2014
In this paper, details of the uses of various robots in the shipbuilding process are provided, with an
emphasis on newer developments and applications. The current state of robot applications will be
discussed according to the priority of the shipbuilding process. First, various robots for open structures,
such as several types of welding carriages and 6-axis articulated robot manipulators, will be reviewed in
terms of their mechanisms and applications. Second, several attempts to design autonomous mobile
robotic systems for closed blocks of the double-hulled structure of a ship will be discussed in terms of
the performance characteristics of their proposed self-traveling mechanisms. Lastly, all corresponding
technologies for overcoming structural complexities in closed blocks as well as future directions of robot
automation in the shipbuilding industry are also discussed.
& 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Robot automation
Shipbuilding industry
Self-traveling mechanism
Environment recognition
Launch and recovery system
Contents
1.
2.
3.
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Robots in open structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Robots in closed structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1.
Intelligent carriages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.2.
Mobile robots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.3.
Modularized airtight controller. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.4.
Environment recognition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.5.
Multiple robot control, launch and recovery system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Acknowledgment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. Introduction
Over the past few decades, research on robotics has made
considerable impact on many industrial elds [38,39]. Briey, these
successful achievements of robotics research in industrial applications
can be attributed to rising labor costs, aging skilled workers, and the
inclination to avoid 3D (dirty, dangerous, and difcult) jobs in many
industries. The shipbuilding industry, which is the major concern of
this paper, is still one of the labor-intensive industries that demand
numerous skilled workers. Owing to the nature of the shipbuilding
industry, shortening the shipbuilding process should directly lead to
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Welding
Blasting
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Painting
Double-hulled block
Transverse direction
Transverse web floors
Longitudinal
stiffeners
5,100 mm
10,920 mm
3,000 mm
Longitudinal direction
Longitudinal girders
Fig. 1. Overall view of double-hulled structure with some overhead operations needed during the shipbuilding process.
Table 1
Industrial accident rate in the Korean shipbuilding industry [1].
Year
06
07
08
09
10
Shipbuilding industry
Accident rate (%)
Industrial accident victims (person)
Death toll (person)
Average accident rate for all industries (%)
1.89
2240
48
0.77
1.55
2065
46
0.72
1.76
2375
45
0.71
1.41
2413
53
0.70
1.20
2122
47
0.69
Table 2
Effect of increased production in the Korean shipbuilding industry on employment [1].
Amount of increase of Coefcient of employment
production (billion)
induction (person/thousand
million)
Employment
induction effect
(person)
1006.7
6040
6.0
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system will improve the shipbuilding process in terms of fundamental human rights by reducing harsh working environment for
workers. Undoubtedly, an enhanced image or perception of
improved working conditions in shipbuilding will enable more
efcient manpower management by preventing the outow of skilled
workers. Thus, to achieve such advantages, production and R&D
departments should actively adopt cooperative attitudes toward one
another for achieving mutually supportive relationships.
As mentioned earlier, the working conditions in double-hulled
structures as well as the labor-intensive nature of shipbuilding are
likely to be one of the main causes of the high rate of industrial
accidents relative to the average rate for all industries.
Fig. 2 shows the manufacturing process used to obtain the
closed block, which is a sub-module of the double-hulled wall of
a ship. A bottom shell and an open block are assembled separately
using welding processes [2]. The bottom shell is composed of
a wide steel plate with several reinforcing longitudinal stiffeners
welded to it in parallel. The open block is inserted laterally along
the longitudinal stiffeners of the bottom shell so that each stiffener
slides into its corresponding slit to assemble the closed block. The
resulting closed block must then be welded. Finally, welding must
be performed inside the closed block along the contact boundary
of the open block and bottom shell [2]. Currently, human workers
execute this welding process, as well as painting and blasting
processes, by working inside the space enclosed by the top shell,
the bottom shell, and a pair of transverse web oors and girders.
These manual operations inside the closed block remain the most
difcult and hazardous jobs performed by human workers in the
shipbuilding industry (Fig. 3). As a result, shipbuilding companies
are placed in a difcult situation in which skilled workers
for double-hulled structures are lacking. Therefore, the need for
automated solutions based on robotic systems has been high, and
several remarkable attempts have been made.
Fig. 2. Manufacturing of a closed block, which is part of the ship wall of the double
hull structure.
Turn Over
Open block
Bottom Shell
Closed Block
(Needs to be welded)
Table 3
Commercialized welding carriages [19, 20].
(a) 1-axis carriage (left) and 2-axis
welding carriage (right)
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Controller cables
from the ceiling
Control and power cables
from the overhead crane
Control
panel
Wire spool
6-axis welding robots
U-shaped parts
6-axis welding robots
Moving direction
Wire spool
Fig. 6. Field test of welding robot RRX working inside double-hulled structure
of ship.
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Table 4
Several types of intelligent welding systems.
(a) 4-axis carriage [20, 25]
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Table 5
Several types of the mobile robot system.[2, 20]
(a) Hitachi's painting robot, Japan [27]
Table 5(a) shows the painting robot, which has been developed
by the Hitachi-Zosen shipyard in Japan [27]. A 6-axis painting
robot, plus a self-driving carriage, is placed inside the closed block
by using an expandable placer. However, this robotic system
requires a large access hole 800 mm 1600 mm in size. Any
enlargement of the hole requires the permission of the ship's
owner and is almost impossible to achieve because the size of the
access hole is related to ship-design safety regulations. Another
serious problem of this robotic painting system is that it cannot
move freely in the transverse direction inside an enclosed block.
The Industrial Automation Institute (IAI) in Spain has developed
a robotic system called ROWER 1, which is shown in Table 5(b)
[28]. This robot moves like a spider, and has four legs that extend
and contract; it moves autonomously and thus overcomes many of
the welding obstacles encountered in a closed block. However, it
has to be disassembled into seven modules before it can be placed
into a closed block, and then re-assembled in situ. Re-assembly
takes approximately 15 min, which is long enough to seriously
affect the productivity of the system [29]. Therefore, a new
innovative robotic system is needed to satisfy specic requirements such as, compactness to go through an access hole of
500 mm 700 mm, possessing autonomous transverse traveling
capability inside the closed block at relatively high speed, and
having the required operational performance characteristics.
Finally, the RRX and Inrotech welding robotic system, which
overcomes all of the disadvantages of the previous robots, have
recently been established. The commercial Inrotech welding
robotic system is composed of a Fanuc manipulator for welding
the U-shaped parts, a rail system in transverse direction for mobile
functions inside of the blocks, and feeder rail for deploying the
welding manipulator and the rail system from outside of the
closed blocks. This impressive feeder rail system of Inrotech
solution can transport all welding equipments such as welding
robot, rail system, cables, controller, welding machine, etc. from
outside of the blocks through the access hole as shown in Fig. 7.
Moreover, this commercial welding robotic system has been
successfully applied and contributed to the Odense Steel Shipyard
in 2009. [35]
And the RRX is composed of a 6-axis welding manipulator and
a mobile platform in its newest version, where the main function
of the 6-axis welding robot is to weld the U-shape boundaries of
the closed block, and that of the mobile platform is to enable the
transverse and longitudinal movements of the entire robotic
system required to move it to subsequent welding locations. The
RRX platform also displays performance characteristics that differ
from those of the previous mobile robots designed for closed
blocks. First, all electronic components, such as servo drivers and
Access hole
Controller &
modular welding system
power supply, are fully embedded in the airtight lower sliding body
with tailored set of heat pipes for cooling; this is a reasonable design
considering the hazardous environment. In addition, removing all
cables from outside can lead to successful application of RRX by
preventing all negative effects from various noises, hazardous air
conditions, and difcult handling issues. One other point is that the
aim of the RRX platform design is to achieve multiple functions. This
platform is applicable to various tasks such as welding, blasting, and
painting by changing its manipulators [30,31]. Consequently, this
multifunctional mobile platform fully covers all shipbuilding processes. Lastly, RRX shows welding of high quality without further
manual welding operations because it can move in the longitudinal
direction after welding U-shaped parts to cover its insufcient
manipulator workspace and successfully weld both sides of the
bracket. Moreover, its welding performance and mobile functions
have been veried through eld testing over a 1-year period.
Considering the circumstances as a whole, the mobile robot systems
designed in the year ahead for enclosed structures must consider
the following issues: 1) modularized airtight controller; 2) environment recognition for overcoming structural complexity; 3) multiple
robot control; and 4) launch and recovery system.
3.3. Modularized airtight controller
As discussed briey, the controllers in the Hitachi painting
robot and IAI Rower-1 are located outside of the closed block.
448
Thus, there are a number of cables from outside. This causes the
following negative effects on the entire system. First, dragging
a number of cables in such complex structures will certainly
increase the payload of the self-traveling platforms. Second,
increasing the number of robots simultaneously launched in the
same closed block will give rise to difculties in handling these
cables due to their becoming intricately tangled with one another.
Lastly, there is a negative inuence of electric noise from neighboring welding sites. However, a considerable portion of these
problems can be solved by embedding the modularized airtight
controller in the mobile robots.
The most important issues in the design of a modular and
hermetic controller are to secure robust cooling performance and
dustproof quality because the temperature is 4050 1C during the
summer, and operations such as welding, blasting, and painting
produce considerable amounts of metallic dust (e.g., fumes). This
naturally represents a very hazardous environment for the robot
controller, whose body should be kept fully airtight to prevent the
inow of metallic dust and for which the temperature should be
maintained at its rated level. Thus, to satisfy these design constraints, heat pipes can be incorporated to dissipate the amount of
heat from the servomotor drivers and power units without any
airow into the controller for cooling. For instance, Lee et al.
recently proposed a new cooling system for the mobile welding
robot RRX. This proposed cooling system is composed of heat
pipes, cooling ns, fans, and L-shaped brackets for transferring the
produced heat from the heating resources to the heat pipes.
Validation through eld tests fully supports the idea that this
design approach is appropriate for the controller to maintain
stable performance in such a harsh environment. [34]
3.4. Environment recognition
To successfully move in a closed block composed of many
stiffeners and obstacles (e.g., brackets, pipes, ladders), careful
consideration of environment recognition should be conducted.
In the case of the longitudinal stiffeners, structural errors such as
differences in height, interval distance, and straightness naturally
occur in the assembly process among neighboring stiffeners. Thus,
mobile robot platforms that travel on or use the longitudinal
stiffeners will inevitably display uncertainty in their mobile
performance. For instance, the RRX may have inclined robot
postures on two neighboring stiffeners during repetitive movements in the transverse direction when their heights differ. It may
also exhibit errors in travel distances in the longitudinal and
transverse directions when the stiffeners have different interval
distances. Such inclined postures and differences in the initial
positions of the robot at every welding location will negatively
affect the welding quality because of inaccurate recognition of the
target structures. Namely, as the RRX uses a laser displacement
sensor for nding every start or end point for all welding
trajectories of a U-shaped part, having its own recognition algorithm is essential for successfully performing given operations
even though the surrounding structures have the described errors
(Fig. 8).
In fact, we note that some components installed in the closed
blocks (e.g., pipes and ladders) are not necessarily fully represented in the ship hull CAD data. This means that for autonomous
wheeled mobile robots to successfully determine their actual
locations within such environments based on given CAD data for
task-path planning is highly difcult. Commonly, the accurate
position of the robot can be estimated through maps and various
sensor systems by recording information obtained from one form
of perception and comparing it to a current set of perceptions.
However, unreliability of even one of the components will lead to
poor positioning accuracy and a high likelihood of collision with
Raw data
Mobile robot
Scanning sensor
Raw data
Obstacle recognition
Mobile robot
Hose Feeder
Scanning sensor
Table
Fig. 8. Result of environment recognition inside closed block for RRX blasting
application.
4. Conclusion
This paper tried to deliver all detailed discussions of the recent
impressive research results in terms of the robotic mechanisms for
welding the ship hull structures to the present. For a fresh
possibility of appearances of innovative robotic systems in shipbuilding industry, one of the important topics would be successful
combinations of the proposed technologies and considerations to
the present with well-designed mobile mechanisms such as RRX
and Inrotech solution. To summarize, methods for convenient
handling, operation, and maintenance in the real world and for
efcient robot performance on all given tasks without any further
manual operations were discussed.
Lastly, as stated earlier about employment induction effect in
Korean shipbuilding industry through providing statistics from the
Bank of Korea, an enhanced image or perception of improved
working conditions by successful application of a robotic system in
harsh environments might enable more efcient manpower management by preventing the outow of skilled workers. Though
the employment stabilization is a matter to be carefully dealt with
in many ways, the statistics clearly show one of the contrary
evidences that the application of robot automation to the shipbuilding process may raise the long-term decline in employments.
That is, it can be carefully interpreted as successful applications
of robotic system that is probably one of the best ways to
gradually improve the chances of such advantages in terms of
fundamental human rights by reducing harsh working environment for workers. Also, it would be greatly helpful that the
production and R&D departments should actively adopt cooperative attitudes toward one another for achieving mutually supportive relationships.
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the Soongsil University Research
Fund in 2013.
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