Intelligent Robot Path Planning System for Grinding of Aircraft Propeller Blades

Grinding, sanding, or buffing tasks (which we generalize as blending tasks) are critical processes for many manufacturers, especially in aerospace. Robotic blending solutions are desired that combine the flexibility and agility of a manual process with the repeatability and safety of a robotic system. This proposal seeks to deliver a robust robotic software suite to address the Air Force's specific challenges for propeller grinding. Our proposed solution combines Southwest Research Institute's existing robotic blending techniques (which focus on surface segmentation, tool planning for blending, and trajectory optimization) with TRACLabs' CRAFTSMAN framework (which focuses on multi-limb, multi-robot navigation and manipulation programming via graphical user interfaces). We call this integrated system CAMBR. CAMBR will enable a new approach to propeller blade remanufacturing and to robotic blending tasks in general. Our aims for Phase I are 1) to evaluate and integrate the existing technologies that support Path Planing for Surface Processing, and 2) to implement the necessary visualization tools for dense surface-processing plans to provide an intuitive operator interface for plan verification and editing. The proof-of-concept CAMBR system will be demonstrated in simulation.