Development of Cylindrical Elastic Tracked-crawler for Pipe Inspection

Abstract

There are many pipes such as a water pipe and a gas pipe in a chemical plant, a factory and house. It is possible to prevent accident ensure safety by these investigating. However, many pipes are very narrow and it is difficult for people to inspect directly. In this study, a cylindrical crawler robot based on Amoeba locomotion, which has a simple mechanism and does not need large space to move, is proposed. When moving the inside of a pipe, this crawler robot uses the elastic force of a crawler belt to hold the robot in pipe. Additionally the robot uses elastic deformation of a crawler belt to pass of a step between pipes with different diameters. Therefore, the robot can move the pipes of different diameters and the perpendicular pipe by using only on actuator. This paper reports the structure, drive mechanism, design, and prototype evaluation.