A Wall Climbing Robot for Oil Tank Inspection

Abstract

Thousands of storage tanks in oil refineries have to be inspected manually to prevent leakage and/or any other potential catastrophe. A wall climbing robot with permanent magnet adhesion mechanism equipped with nondestructive sensor has been designed. The robot can be operated autonomously or manually. In autonomous mode the robot uses an ingenious coverage algorithm based on distance transform function to navigate itself over the tank surface in a back and forth motion to scan the external wall for the possible faults using sensors without any human intervention. In manual mode the robot can be navigated wirelessly from the ground station to any location of interest. Preliminary experiment has been carried out to test the prototype.