Abstract:Muck removal at the bottom of tunnel is required before steel arch erection in tunneling boring machine (TBM) construction. With the increasing requirements for quality, efficiency and safety, the traditional manual muck removal is difficult to meet the construction requirements. A muck removal method for the robot was proposed. Firstly, the distribution of muck at the bottom of the tunnel and the characteristics of the environmental structure were analyzed, the design requirements of the robot were obtained, and the new robot structure was designed. Secondly, the link coordinate system was established based on the Denavit–Hartenberg (D–H) parameter method, the forward and inverse kinematics were calculated, the matrix of the end positional and the selection algorithm of the optimal solution of the inverse kinematics were presented, and the workspace was calculated and analyzed. The results showed that the robot could achieve a working depth of 3 830 mm and a working range of ± 45°. Then, taking the single joint position control as an example, the integral separation PID controller was designed. Compared with the traditional PID, the overshoot was reduced by 18.7%, and the problem of joint jitter caused by the accumulation of position error was solved. Finally, the test platform of the muck removal robot was built, and the muck removal experiment was conducted. The results showed that it took 53 seconds to clean muck, which could be used as an effective solution for muck removal at the bottom of the tunnel during open TBM construction.