Robot for Re-Coating Tall Antenna Towers

The growing maintenance burden of the Navy’s Very Low Frequency and Low Frequency (VLF/LF) towers make the development of an automated re-coating robot an appealing option for reducing support costs. Current methods of painting towers rely heavily on human agility, vision, intelligence and willingness to take risk. A key challenge for any automated system operating in this environment is to gain sufficient mobility over the tower. Boston Dynamics proposes to build a robot comprised of two major subsystems which separately address reach and dexterity. The robot will include a base platform that spans a significant portion of the tower width. A shuttle attached to this base platform will carry a small agile arm that translates along its length to reach all surfaces of the structure, much like a dot matrix printer. The base provides large reach across the span and the arm provides high dexterity to access all surfaces of the antenna. The arm will have mounted on it a vision system for surface inspection and navigation, water jetting nozzles for cleaning, and pneumatic spray equipment for painting. While many challenges remain to make this robot economically viable, we feel that this mobility solution addresses the most difficult engineering challenges.