Design and verification of a micro pipe robot

Abstract

This paper proposes a micro pipe robot with an outer diameter of 46mm and a weight of 28.6g. The micro pipe robot is mainly composed of a body, an electromagnetic solenoid, a spring, and a guide support foot. The principle of inertial impact driving and the feasibility of a direct-acting electromagnet drive are all proved by the gait analysis of the micro pipe robot, multi-body dynamics simulation of the virtual prototype and the experiment verification of the inertial impact principle. Experiments with a single electromagnet is driven without a load show that the micro pipe robot can achieve a maximum speed of 60.290mm/s in a horizontal pipe with a 10Hz sawtooth wave and an inner diameter of 51mm.