A ROBOTICALLY ASSISTED MUNITION LOADING SYSTEM

Due to the reliance upon manual operations, conventional loading of mu nitions on tactical aircraft has several deficiencies including ineffi cient manpower and time utilization; accident potential; exposure of c rew members to chemical, biological, and nuclear agents; and visual ob struction. This article reports on the research and development of a f ull-scale prototype robotic system called Robotically Assisted Munitio n Loading System (RAMLS) comprising a fine motion mechanism (FIMOM), a pose acquisition device (PAD), a manual controller, and a data acquis ition and computing system. The FIMOM is a six-degree-of-freedom (DOF) parallel mechanism driven by six hydraulic actuators and the PAD is a passive open kinematic chain mechanism having 6 DOF. The article desc ribes the design and functions of the RAMLS components and presents re sults of experiments conducted to evaluate the RAMLS's performance. (C ) 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.