1 A SIMPLE ARCHITECTURE FOR IN-PIPE INSPECTION ROBOTS

Abstract: The paper presents an original robot architecture for in-pipe inspection. The robot consists of two parts articulated with a universal joint. One part is guided along the pipe by a set of wheels moving parallel to the axis of the pipe, while the other part is forced to follow an helical motion thanks to tilted wheels rotating about the axis of the pipe. A single motor is placed between the two bodies to produce the motion. All the wheels are mounted on a suspension to accommodate for changing tube diameter and curves in the pipe. The robot is autonomous and carries its own batteries and radio link. Four different prototypes have been constructed for pipe diameters of 170, 70 and 40 mm, respectively. For smaller diameters, the batteries and the radio receiver may be placed on an additional body attached to the others. The autonomy of the prototypes is about 2 hours. This architecture is very simple and the rotary motion can be exploited to carry out scrubbing or inspection tasks