LAUSR

This article presents a development of a robot which is used for inspecting electrical generators. Traditionally, to inspect an electrical power generator, its rotor is required to remove first and the inspection task is then performed by human. This process consumes time and cost of operation. Moreover, there are risks to damage generator while removing the rotor as well as accidents during the operation. An alternative approach without removing the rotor by using robot inspection becomes important. Therefore, a small robot called generator inspection vehicle (GIV) has been developed for the purpose of the inspection without removing the rotor. The proposed robot's thickness is 20 mm height that is suited for using in small generators. By this size, small on‐board controllers installed in the GIV robot have been especially designed to reduce connections between the master station (i.e., a laptop and a joystick or controller pad) and the remote side (i.e., the robot). This approach requires only two wires for the connections. A new method for controlling the robot's alignment while operating inside the generator by using fusion signal from camera and inertial measurement unit (IMU) is also proposed. The robot can also carry equipment for specific tasks which are a wedge tightness detector (WTD) and an articulating gripper. Both of the proposed equipment, the WTD and the articulating gripper, are also presented. The proposed robot was tested in small generators, which their rotor diameter ranged from 980 and 1050 mm. Case studies of our design in field tests have also been reported in the article.