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This paper presents a biomimetic prototype of a mobile robot that can be used to inspect the subdrainage conditions of pipelines located along different highways in Mexico. Computer-aided design tools have been used to size each of the prototype components as inspired by anatomical spider structure. Springs are integrated to generate proper contact...
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Context 1
... the legs can be actuated with a pressure that is exerted by springs. Figure 2 shows a proposed design referring to spider characteristics in which the attached body links are lifted in the y-axis, while the entire body robot rotates on its axis. Each arrow represents the direction in which the spider's legs and the wheels of the robot move. ...
Citations
... Islas-Garciaea et al. at the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico developed a bionic type pipeline robot [9], as shown in Fig. 6. The robot uses rollers as a walking mechanism and is mainly used to detect and analyze the condition of underground drainage pipes in different highways in Mexico. ...
Pipelines are widely used in our daily life and industrial production, in order to solve the ensuring problem of pipeline failure, many kinds of pipeline inspection robots have appeared, and nowadays, pipeline robots have been widely used in various pipeline inspection and repair. This paper mainly discusses the importance of pipeline inspection robots in various pipeline fields, describes the technical characteristics of pipeline robots at home and abroad in recent years, and puts forward suggestions for the future development of pipeline robots in view of the existing problems, which is of reference significance for the future development.
... Inspection robots can patrol the road and collect relevant data, which can be integrated and analyzed for real-time monitoring, predicting traffic conditions, and quickly responding to emergencies. This synergistic effect improves roads' safety, smoothness, and sustainability, providing innovative solutions for urban traffic management and planning [5][6][7]. ...
... Equations (3), (4), (7), and (8) are combined to derive the differential equation of motion of the two-degree-of-freedom model of the Ackermann chassis, which is given as follows: ...
With the continuous acceleration of urbanization, traffic congestion, traffic accidents, and urban environmental problems are becoming increasingly serious, which negatively impacts the lives of city residents. With today's urbanization trend, traffic management is a pressing issue, and the safety and smoothness of highways profoundly affect a city's economy and quality of life. As a result, the intelligent inspection robot has entered the public view. It has the advantages of stability and efficiency, can continue to work in a high-intensity state, and helps reduce a lot of human workloads. Firstly, an intelligent transport monitoring system based on the Internet of Things (IoT) is proposed. This system integrates deep learning and artificial intelligence technology, which can quickly query traffic parameters, environmental parameters, and violations that may cause traffic accidents. Secondly, an intelligent inspection robot is introduced to monitor road traffic flow and violation records in real-time, which provides technical support for further scientific management of road traffic. Finally, the intelligent monitoring system's sensitivity and improvement measures are analyzed using the Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithm results, making intelligent traffic monitoring more popular. A section of closed safety road is selected for the inspection robot test. The results reveal that (1) the urban transportation model based on the IoT can meet the architecture of intelligent urban transportation. (2) Considering the performance of the inspection robot, the SLAM algorithm is more suitable for road intelligent traffic monitoring. (3) When the number of particles in the improved SLAM algorithm is small, the accuracy and real-time performance of the algorithm can also be guaranteed. The calculation efficiency is improved to 80%, and the modeling accuracy is improved by 23.3%. Traditional traffic monitoring methods typically rely on static sensors and limited data sources. However, the proposed system leverages IoT technology's and inspection robots' real-time data collection capabilities, achieving a more comprehensive, accurate, and flexible acquisition of traffic data. Through this exploration, the overall ideas and objectives of the construction of intelligent highways are clarified, which will lay a solid foundation for the follow-up construction of intelligent highways and provide comprehensive design and practical ideas. The improved SLAM algorithm can more stably complete the positioning and mapping of the tunnel inspection robot in the road environment. In the SLAM algorithm, an Extended Kalman Filter is introduced to ensure the accuracy and real-time of the improved algorithm, which can be applied to the modeling and positioning of unknown environments. Consequently, using the SLAM algorithm in the road detection robot system can stably realize environment awareness and autonomous path planning.
... According to [13], the simple structure wheel-type robot uses wheels connected directly to the vehicle that supplies motion to move. They have difficulty moving in bent and vertical pipelines, according to [14]. However, [15] discovered that they have simple techniques and can easily maneuver through numerous bends in pipelines. ...
Pipe inspection, according to the literature, is not the cleanest or safest job in the world, as inspectors must perform this critical activity in hazardous and difficult situations. As time-consuming as it is, they must be inspected because they are vulnerable to problems such as cracks and corrosion, which jeopardize their integrity. They must also be inspected regularly to ensure reliable operation and the safety of workers, equipment, and the environment. Inspection is essential because it monitors and maintains the integrity of aging infrastructure while also ensuring that it operates safely and without endangering the health of plant operators. Many corporations, mostly in developing countries, continue to use traditional oil and gas industry procedures to detect and repair leaks in pipeline networks, even though such approaches are time-consuming and dangerous to humans. The goal of this research is to create a frugal inspection robot for detecting inpipe leaks in the oil and gas industry. In addition, using the robot's acquired images, an image processing technique will be used to detect in-pipe leaks. The frugal robot will be compared to industrial in-pipe inspection robots such as Pig, wheeled, walker/legged, and wall-pressed in terms of cost, flexibility, size, stability, and vertical mobility. According to the study's findings, the frugal inspection robot can detect in-pipe leaks.
... A method that is adaptable to multiple pipe diameters has been suggested for robotic systems that inspect and clean the insides of pipes [5][6][7][8], especially in the case of actual industrial sites, where various obstacles, such as horizontal, vertical, and branching obstacles, appear in the piping configuration, urging a solution to interconnect multiple modules and overcome the obstacles [9]. ...
... The block diagram of the final PID design is shown in Figure 10, where the transfer function is given by Equation (9). The Ziegler-Nichols method was applied to the selected model to set the current PID gain and optimal gain values of the robot controller. ...
This paper proposes a robotic system that automatically identifies and removes spatters generated while removing the back-bead left after the electric resistance welding of the outer and inner surfaces during pipe production. Traditionally, to remove internal spatters on the front and rear of small pipes with diameters of 18–25 cm and lengths of up to 12 m, first, the spatter locations (direction and length) are determined using a camera that is inserted into the pipe, and then a manual grinder is introduced up to the point where spatters were detected. To optimize this process, the proposed robotic system automatically detects spatters by analyzing the images from a front camera and removes them, using a grinder module, based on the spatter location and the circumferential coordinates provided by the detection step. The proposed robot can save work time by reducing the required manual work from two points (the front and back of the pipe) to a single point. Image recognition enables the detection of spatters with sizes between 0.1 and 10 cm with 94% accuracy. The internal average roughness, Ra, of the pipe was confirmed to be 1 µm or less after the spatters were finally removed.
... These robots are biologically inspired by spiders [61], inchworms and snakes [62], as shown in Fig. 9. Islas-Garcí a E. et al. [61] developed a robot imitating a spider, and it uses springs to imitate the motion of spider legs by making the wheels touch the inner surface of the pipeline during motion. L. Pfotzer et al. [62] developed a snakelike robot that can alter the angle of joints present in the robot; this helps the robot to pass over the obstacles easily like a snake, and this robot can pass through pipelines having a minimum diameter of 250 mm. ...
... These robots are biologically inspired by spiders [61], inchworms and snakes [62], as shown in Fig. 9. Islas-Garcí a E. et al. [61] developed a robot imitating a spider, and it uses springs to imitate the motion of spider legs by making the wheels touch the inner surface of the pipeline during motion. L. Pfotzer et al. [62] developed a snakelike robot that can alter the angle of joints present in the robot; this helps the robot to pass over the obstacles easily like a snake, and this robot can pass through pipelines having a minimum diameter of 250 mm. ...
... Prototypes of Bio-Inspired wheeled type IPIR. (a) Inspired by Spiders[61], (b) Inspired by Inchworms and Snakes[62]. ...
Research in In-Pipe Inspection Robots (IPIRs)
has gained interest over recent years. Pipeline inspection
robots bring reliability and repeatability to various pipeline
inspection and maintenance processes. IPIRs are
categorized based on their type of locomotion, and this study
aims to analyze their advantages and limitations. Among all
the IPIRs, the wheeled type IPIR has seen a tremendous
change in its design, steering mechanism, and the way they
use different wheels to pass through pipelines easily. This
study compares and analyses an up-to-date review of
wheeled-type IPIRs in detail. This review helps the
researchers to select the optimal wheeled type IPIR for
inspection. The review concludes with the future research
directions that the researchers need to focus on for the
development of pipeline inspection robots. Developing an
effective IPIR ensures human safety and improves the
inspection process.
... In-Pipe Inspection Robots (IPIR) have undergone a great deal of improvement recently, and these advancements are categorized according to their various locomotion patterns. Fig. 1 shows examples of the Pipeline Inspection Gauge (PIG) [9,10], screw [16,17], inchworm [18][19][20][21][22][23][24], wall press [25][26][27][28][29], walking [30][31][32][33][34], caterpillar [35][36][37][38][39], and wheel type [40][41], [50][51][52], [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49]. ...
The most popular method for transporting fluids and gases is through pipelines nowadays. Regular inspection is necessary for the pipelines to work correctly. Humans must not enter potentially dangerous environments to inspect these pipelines. As a result of this, pipeline robots came into existence. These pipe inspection robots help in pipeline inspection, protecting numerous people from harm since human beings cannot enter the pipes and inspect them in case there is any such or kind of damage that requires repair. Despite numerous improvements, pipeline robots still have several limitations. The introduction of this in pipe inspection robots helps to solve many problems, such as leakage of the gas or fluid pipelines, rustiness, and also if the pipe is broken from any part.
... It uses omnidirectional wheels, so when it meets any kind of obstacle it can easily rotate about the circumferential direction to overcome the problem. All robots mentioned comes under the wheel type and to crawl through vertical pipes they use the wall press-type mechanism which enables them to climb easily (Kwon et al. 2010;Kim et al. 2013;Min et al. 2014;Tȃtar and Pop 2016;Zhao et al. 2021;Kakogawa and Ma 2018;Tourajizadeh et al. 2021;Islas-García et al. 2021). ...
Research on in-pipe inspection robots (IPIRs) are gaining attention over a few decades as their applications are widening in various fields. Developments in in-pipe inspection robots (IPIRs) are carried out using various types of locomotion. Each type has its advantages and limitations. In this research, an in-pipe inspection robot (IPIR) was designed and developed based on wheeled wall press–type locomotion. A kinematic form of the robotic system is developed to determine the robot trajectory and angular velocity. Motion analysis was carried out to find the motion of the robot when it passes through the elbow and straight pipes. The results from a motion analysis are taken from the case study to compare it with existing research. The findings show that the robot can be employed for in-pipe inspection.
The human toe, characterized by its rigid-flexible structure comprising hard bones and flexible joints, facilitates adaptive and stable movement across varied terrains. In this paper, we utilized a motion capture system to study the adaptive adjustments of toe joints when encountering obstacles. Inspired by the mechanics of toe joints, we proposed a novel design method for a rigid-flexible coupled wheel. The wheel comprises multiple elements: a rigid skeleton, supporting toes, connecting shafts, torsion springs, soft tendons, and damping pads. The torsion springs connect the rigid frame to the supporting toes, enabling them to adapt to uneven terrains and pipes with different diameters. The design was validated through kinematic and dynamic modeling, rigid-flexible coupled dynamics simulation, and stress analysis. Different stiffness coefficients of torsion springs were compared for optimal wheel design. Then, the wheel was applied to a sewer robot, and its performance was evaluated and compared with a pneumatic rubber tire in various experiments, including movement on flat surfaces, overcoming small obstacles, adaptability tests in different terrains, and active driving force tests in dry and wet pipelines. The results prove that the designed wheel showed better stability and anti-slip properties than conventional tires, making it suitable for diverse applications such as pipeline robots, desert vehicles, and lunar rovers.
In the pipeline industry, it is often necessary to monitor cracks and damage in pipelines, or need to clean the inside of the pipeline regularly, or collect adhesive on the inner wall of the pipe, but the pipe is too narrow and difficult for humans to enter, it is necessary to use a pipe machine to complete the work. In this paper, a newly designed screw-driven in-pipe inspection robot (IPIR) is proposed. Compared with common robots, this robot innovatively designs adapting mechanism. The robot can not only adapt to the change of the inner diameter size of the pipeline by using the bionic principle and the deformation characteristics of flexible components but also can pass smoothly in the horizontal/oblique/vertical pipelines and has a certain ability to cross obstacles. In addition, it can transmit images of the inner wall of the pipeline wirelessly for data analysis. Finally, through theoretical analysis and prototype construction, the performance of the robot is verified. The results show that the prototype robot can not only smoothly pass through the acrylic pipe with inner diameter of 120–138 mm but also pass through boss with a height of 3 mm.
This paper discusses the development and design of two wheeled-type In-Pipe Inspection Robots (IPIRs), Kuzhali I and Kuzhali II, which were created to address the limitations of traditional human inspection methods and earlier robot designs. Specifically, the robots aim to overcome the motion singularity experienced by IPIRs when navigating through curved pipes. Kuzhali I was developed with wheels mounted at an asymmetric angle, which enables the wheels to maintain contact with the pipe’s surface, preventing motion singularity. However, Kuzhali I had limitations due to its prismatic mechanism, and thus Kuzhali II was developed with a telescopic mechanism to allow it to pass through vertical pipes with obstacles. Motion analysis was conducted on both robots to demonstrate how they overcome motion singularity and navigate through straight and curved pipelines. Simulation results showed that the forces acting on the robots’ wheels fell within 5 N to 12 N, demonstrating stability while navigating pipeline junctions. Experimental tests were conducted on Kuzhali II, and the results were compared to simulation results, showing an error of less than 5%. The results of the experiments indicate that Kuzhali II is safe to use for pipeline inspection, can navigate through vertical pipelines with ease and can overcome motion singularity in curved pipes. These robots offer a faster, more accurate, and safer alternative to human inspection, which can reduce the risk of pipeline failures and associated environmental and safety hazards.
