Development of Automatic Mark Welding Robot

Generally, ships have marks of various shapes on outside of the hull. Among them, so called "Draft Mark" indicates the distance from the bottom of the keel to the waterline. Draft marks are used to determine the displacement and other properties of the ship for stability and control purposes. These marks are made up of welding bead or sticking the steel plate on outside of the hull. To improve the confidence level of the ship owner, quality and accuracy of the draft mark is very important. So the automatic mark welding robot is used to enable a high quality and accurate manufacturing line. To improve the system portability, the system is divided into two distinct parts, namely mechanical part and control part. Mechanical part is robust, a lightweight, and easy to dismantle. The control part consists of an in-house developed controller, which is based on embedded Linux. Also, the control part consists of power line communication module to ensure the applicability of the controller in manufacturing line. In this paper, the methodologies of control and configuration of the robot are discussed.