Patent Application: US-201313854196-A

Abstract:
force control system . the system includes a first pair of permanent magnets for providing a normal force on the wheel of a robot adapted for n - pipe inspections . a second pair of magnets is provided with opposite polarity so that a rotor containing magnets may be rotated with a minimum of torque required and therefore with a minimum of energy expended .

Description:
the mechanism described in this patent application makes use of a magnetic force between permanent magnets to produce an adjustable normal force on the wheel / leg of an in - pipe robot . fig2 a and b , and fig3 display the front and side views of the mechanism 10 . it consists of a set of stator magnets 12 that are placed on the circumference of an in - pipe robot 14 and a set of rotor magnets 16 attached to a disk 18 rotated by a shaft connected to a servomotor ( not shown ). the set of stator magnets 12 consists of two pairs . the leg pair of stator magnets is attached to the end of each leg / wheel with the north pole facing inward . this pair of stator magnets can move freely in the radial direction as the leg / wheel slides along the guide . an anti - torque pair of stator magnets 20 is placed along the circumference of the in - pipe robot at a certain distance away from the leg pair 12 . this anti - torque pair 20 of stator magnets is fixed in place and most importantly has magnetic poles reversed from the leg pair with north pole facing outward . the set of rotor magnets also consists of two pairs . each pair is mounted on the disk 18 with both pairs having the north pole facing outwards . the two disks with rotor magnets are attached to a single shaft rotated by a servomotor . the two disks are positioned such that the set of stator magnets are directly above the rotor magnets . also , both stator and rotor magnets are symmetrically placed with equal spacing . the leg stator / rotor pair attached to the leg and the shaft work together to produce a controllable normal force . the magnetic force on the stator magnet 12 by the rotor magnet 16 produces the normal force on the pipe wall , which in turn creates friction . here , a new variable θ is introduced which equals the angle between the rotor and stator magnet as shown in fig4 a and b . this angle θ is controlled by the rotating disk 18 via a servomotor ( not shown ). fig4 shows two instances where θ = 0 and θ ≠ 0 with repulsion force between north poles of rotor / stator magnets . qualitatively speaking , the repulsion force decreases as the distance between the north poles increases . when θ = 0 , the distance between the north poles is smallest and the repulsion force is in the direction of the normal force . so , the maximum normal force is produced at this position . as the shaft rotates and θ increases , the distance between the north poles also increases and the direction of repulsion force deviates more from the direction of the normal force . as a result , the normal force produced by the mechanism will decrease as θ increases . therefore , by calibration of the output of the normal force , obtaining an accurate f n ( θ ) curve and controlling the angle θ , we can control the normal force of the mechanism , however , although the magnetic force on the stator by the rotor produces a desirable normal force , an equal and opposite magnetic force on the rotor by the stator produces torque on the shaft that needs to be overcome by the servomotor . the greater the desired normal force , the greater he required torque needed to be overcome . since a motor consumes a lot of energy in providing high torque , a leg pair of stator / rotor magnets alone cannot produce normal force in an energy efficient way . for the mechanism 10 to generate a normal force with minimal energy consumption , the torque imposed on the shaft must be reduced . the anti - torque pair of rotor and stator magnets is incorporated into the mechanism for this purpose . fig5 a and b show a magnetic force between the leg and anti - torque pair of the stator / rotor magnets at a given angle θ . configuration wise , both leg and anti - torque pair of the magnets are the same . nevertheless , there are two main differences between the two pairs . first , the stator magnet 12 on the leg pair is attached to an end of the leg / wheel whereas the stator magnet 20 on the anti - torque pair is fixed on the circumference of the in - pipe robot . therefore , the magnetic force on the stator by the rotor in the anti - torque pair does not contribute to the normal force generated on the pipe wall . second , the poles of the stator magnet 20 on the anti - torque pair are opposite of that of the leg pair . this means that the force acting on the rotor magnet by the stator magnet 20 in the anti - torque pair is equal but opposite in direction from that of the leg pair . thus , the torque that the anti - torque pair produces exactly cancels out the torque produced by the leg pair on the shaft . theoretically , this cancellation will reduce the torque exerted on the shaft to zero and will therefore eliminate the energy consumption . fig6 shows the changes in normal force on the pipewall and changes in the torque on the shaft as the angle θ varies from − 60 ° to + 60 ° for different values of σ . as expected , the maximum normal force occurs when θ = 0 . another interesting point is that the normal force actually becomes negative around 35 °. the angle at which the normal force switches from positive to negative is the point where repulsion forces from like poles are exactly equal to the attraction forces of opposite poles . this phenomenon is desirable since it results in the servomotor controlling the shaft rotation needing to turn from 0 ° to around 35 ° only to provide a normal force from zero to maximum f n . the torque graph indicates that although τ = 0 when θ = 0 , this is an unstable equilibrium point . the torque sharply increases with a small deviation from θ = 0 and reaches maximum between 10 ° and 20 °. also note that a smaller distance between the stator / rotor magnets produces a larger normal force as well as higher torque . from simulated results , the anti - torque pair of the stator / rotor magnets discussed above provides an effective way of reducing the torque on the shaft . the front and rear pair of stator / rotor magnets , being in the same configuration but having opposite polarity , results in two pairs producing equal but opposite torque as shown in fig7 . two prototypes were built to demonstrate the working of the mechanism introduced in this patent and verify the simulation analysis . the different parts were 3d printed and the material used was abs plastic . prototype i was built with only the leg stator / rotor pair and prototype ii was built with both leg and anti - torque stator / rotor pair ( fig8 a - e ). this was done to verify the torque cancelling effect of the anti - torque pair . for both prototypes , the rotor magnets are cylindrical ndfeb magnets ( b 0 = 1t ) of radius 6 . 35 mm and length 6 . 35 mm . stator magnets have the same radius but twice the length as that of the rotor magnets . the distance between the rotor and the stator magnets when aligned coaxially is 6 mm . two experiments were carried out to verify the performance of the mechanism . the first experiment measured the normal force exerted by a single leg as a function of rotation angle θ . as shown in fig9 , a force sensor with resolution of 0 . 05 n was used to measure the normal force and the angle of the rotor shaft was controlled by a servo - motor attached to it . the second experiment was conducted to find the torque exerted on the rotor shaft by the repulsion force between rotor and stator magnets . however , instead of directly measuring the torque exerted on the rotor shaft , current drawn by the servo - motor was measured while supplying a constant voltage . then from the current data , torque generated by the servo - motor was calculated which is equal to the torque exerted on the rotor shaft by the magnets . this was done for both prototypes i and ii . fig1 shows the normal force exerted by one leg on the pipewall for different values of shaft angle θ . as predicted through analysis , the normal force is maximum when the rotor and stator magnets are aligned coaxially ( 74 = 0 ). from this maximum value , the normal force gradually falls as the rotor shaft turns and becomes zero around 35 ° in accordance with the simulation results . this result shows that by controlling the rotor shaft angle between 0 ° to 35 ° ( via a servomotor ), the mechanism presented is able to generate a controllable friction force . furthermore , normal forces measured through experiment agree well with the simulation results . one may note that the graph from the experimental data is more widely spread than that of the simulation result . this may be due to the fact that in the process of theoretical analysis , a magnet was modeled as having point magnetic charges at both ends . in reality , the magnetic charge is not focused at one point but rather spread out along the magnet surface . the experimental result of fig1 shows how torque exerted on the rotor shaft changes with shaft angle θ . the torque for the prototype i sharply rises from aero as the shaft deviates from θ = 0 and then gradually falls to zero after reaching the maximum value . the overall shape of the graph for prototype i is in accordance with the simulation result which again verifies the validity of the simulation analysis . more significantly , prototype ii exhibits a great reduction in the torque compared to prototype i . this shows the effectiveness of the anti - torque stator / rotor pair in cancelling out the torque of the leg stator / rotor pair . the area under the torque - angle curve represents the energy consumed by the mechanism in rotating the rotor shaft to create a controllable friction force . from the experimental data , the anti - torque stator / rotor pair of prototype ii reduced the energy consumption by 76 % in comparison to that of prototype i . theoretically , due to symmetry of the torque generated and cancelled by the leg and anti - torque stator / rotor pair , prototype ii should have zero torque for all angle θ . the consequence of this is that the mechanism can provide controllable friction force by rotation of a shaft while spending almost no energy in the process . however , this is not the case and a small resistive torque exists as the shaft turns as shown in the experimental result for prototype ii . one main reason for this lies in the fact that the servo - motor draws a small current even when there is no external torque applied on the shaft . another reason could be that the prototype is not perfectly machined . any aligning errors of the magnets will perturb the symmetry and give rise to a small torque . it is recognized that modifications and variations of the present invention will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in fee art and it is intended that all such modifications and variations be included within the scope of the appended claims . d . chatzigeorgiou , k . youcef - 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