A multi-robot system for dome inspection and maintenance: Concept and stability analysis

In this paper a novel approach based on multi-robot cooperation is introduced for inspection and repair of dome structures. In this application, three robots which can be extended to more, connect to each other by three strings and cooperate such that all the robots are stable and at least one robot have access to all parts of the dome. The mathematical model of the system is derived and a systematic methodology is developed to find an optimal configuration, based on minimizing the strings´ tensions or maximizing the stability, using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm and quadratic programming. The simulation results prove that there exists a stable path to fully sweep the surface of a dome. The experimental results on a small scale prototype validate these findings.