NDT inspection mobile robot with spiral driven mechanism in pipes

Abstract

This paper describes an NDT inspection mobile robot to drive 100m away with inspection module in 10cm pipes. A spiral driven mechanism was adopted to obtain a high traction force. The inspection module was made with a camera and four laser sensors. This module can find out 1mm size defects with a laser image sensor and recognize damages of the pipes using the camera. The mobile robot was tested in a real scale pipe mock-up and verified the function of mobility and accuracy.