Feasibility study of robotic fibre placement on intersecting multi-axial revolution surfaces

In this paper, the first steps towards using a robotic workcell for the automated fibre placement (AFP) manufacturing of Y-shaped tubes are proposed. The proposed workcell is constituted of a standard serial manipulator holding the fibre placement toolhead combined to a rotary table on which the part where the fibres must be laid out is attached. The investigations carried out in this work explore the feasibility of this setup and more precisely the path planning aspect. To this aim two novel path planning algorithms are presented generalizing the techniques proposed in the literature for open-contoured and cylindrical surfaces. In the first, the maximal geodesic curvature typically allowed in AFP is disregarded to generate continuous paths with a constant placement angle on the branches without any gaps or overlaps. Subsequently, a second algorithm, taking into account this curvature constraint, is presented. These algorithms were implemented in a software using the MATLAB™ suite. Finally, an algorithm to optimize the motion of the robotic system is presented and simulations are discussed.