Joint Linkage and Motion System Design of Pipeline Detecting Snake Robot

Abstract

As a direction of bionic robot research, the snake robot has attracted the attention and research of many scholars at home and abroad. With the advantages of small size and flexible movement to replace humans into narrow and dangerous complex environments, it has great application prospects and economic benefits in the fields of disaster rescue, military reconnaissance and pipeline detection. In this paper, a snake robot motion system with reorganisable modules and strong redundancy is designed, while orthogonal links are selected based on the analysis of the mechanical properties of its joint links. The robot can move forward in the form of traveling waves or spirals in small diameter pipes of 200~500mm diameter to carry out in-pipe surveys and eliminate safety hazards, laying the foundation for subsequent engineering applications.<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sup>