An Integrated Method for the Geometric Inspection of Wind Turbine Hubs with Industrial Robot
Emanuele Lindo Secco, Christian Deters, Helge A. Wurdemann, Hak-Keung Lam, Kaspar Althoefer
Journal of Intelligent Computing, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2016.
DOI: 
Link: http://www.dline.info/jic/fulltext/v7n1/jicv7n1_1.pdf
Abstract:
Wind turbine manufacturing requires the assembly of large mechanical components, which is crucial to inspect
along the production line in order to prevent high reparation costs afterwards. A critical component in this process is the
turbine hub, which supports the wind blades and ball bearings allowing the pitch motion. At present, hub inspection is a
manual task, which requires expert operators and long execution time. This paper proposes a novel methodology for the selfadaptive
inspection of wind turbine hubs via industrial robots: a set of Critical-To-Quality parameters (CTQs), are inferred
from the CAD drawing of wind turbine hub; registration between robot and hub is performed; finally a CAD2robot trajectories
planning is accomplished. Methodology is implemented through a Matlab and Simulink Programming Language and
combined with an Industrial PC-based control technology Beckhoff TwinCAT 3. Tests with an Fanuc Industrial M-6iB robot
arm and R-30iA controller have been successfully performed on re-scaled model of the hub. The flexibility of this methodology
allows applications on other industrial contexts, which can benefit from automation.