Robots the solution to carbon neutral energy 13 May 2011

Robotic engineers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA) believe they hold the key to future global electricity generation – robots that will.

Last year, the IPA team approached Desertec, a consortium whose big idea is building gigantic solar-thermal plants in the desert – the claim being that, if just 1% of the Sahara is devoted to solar energy, enough electricity would be generated for the entire world.

Dr Andreas Pott, leader of the IPA team, states that his team has been working on combining the power of a crane with the speed and accuracy of a robot.

"Our IPAnema robot consists almost entirely of cables and winches," explains Pott. "Held between the cables, which are controlled by the winches with the aid of a computer, is the tool, known as the end effector. In the past, it was hard to predict what the result would be when the actuators were moved, but now we are able to give commands to the winches in a completely synchronised way, thanks to computer modelling."

The demonstrator robot is five metres high and has footprint of nine by seven metres – massive but far too small for the Desertec Project. Pott estimates that this robot would have to be the size of a football pitch, but makes the point that, unlike cranes that must move slowly, due to their swinging loads, IPAnema can accelerate quickly in full control irrespective of size and scale.

The actuator drum contained within the winch produces force that is transmitted through the cable over long distances, he says. These high forces can be used for both heavy loads and for speed simply by changing the gear box between operations.

"When designing a robot capable of disparate tasks, such as lifting the seven tonne collectors, consisting of dozens of parabolic mirrors, or laying cabling, flexibility is the key issue," comments Pott. "We have experimentally proved that we can reconfigure our robot by decreasing the payload by a half or a third, and transfering that capacity into an increase in speed by the same factor.

"This breakthrough doesn't just have application in solar energy installation, we believe our technology could have just as transformational an effect on shipbuilding, aerospace, wind turbines, the erection of electric transmission lines, or indeed, any large scale construction project previously reliant on cranes."

Although the Desertec project leaves political questions unanswered, the technical obstacles may have been addressed: Desertec's initial phase would see hundreds of millions of mirrors covering an area of 36,000 km2, with the robotic cranes slashing costs and timeframes of conventional infrastructure construction.

Brian Tinham

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Fraunhofer Institute (IAP)

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