Design of a multilink-articulated wheeled inspection robot for winding pipelines: AIRo-II

Abstract

This paper presents a multilink-articulated robot with omni and hemispherical wheels (AIRo-II) for inspecting and exploring winding pipes. To quickly adapt to winding pipes, holonomic rolling movement without moving forward and backward is more useful. However, this requires the replacement of driving actuators with rolling actuators at the expense of the driving force. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of high maneuverability of multilink-articulated robots in winding pipes by using less actuators and by designing spring joints. We further validate this by experimental verification.