Design and Development of Pipe Inspection Robot Meant for Resizable Pipe Lines

Abstract

Daily tasks mixed with the various applications in the robotic field. Since past, pipes have been used as the safe fluid transmitter. But gradually, these pipes affected by fatigue, cracking, leakage, sediment and breaking down. Also, sometimes humid environment and chemical products existing in the soil, causes rust and fatigue the pipes. All these problems lead to redundancy and impose high expenses for installation and maintenance. One of the recent inspection ways, is using the robot controller which leads to help and reduces the inspection time and preventive repairs activity. Besides, sometimes there are some unpleasant situation such as unfit pipes. It is obvious that in these conditions, doing inspection in toxic arena, narrow and meandering ways is impossible by human. So, designing a pipe inspection robot can be helpful in such circumstances. In this design, first, the former study, the way of operation, movement, mechanisms and advantages of each robot have studied. Then, by considering important parameters in designing, and sketching, making robot with the help of CATIA took place. This structure enjoys a regular mechanism design. It also has a proportional pipe diameter with the possibility of crossing through the slope routes. On the other hand, recording and processing of visual report, needs a camera and GUI toolbox written in Matlab. So image processing can help to exact investigation. One of the main difference of this research work over the various test on the platform, is hiring the mentioned toolbox which helps the operator to have the double investigation inside of the pipes. Moreover, the adjustable mechanism to pipe diameter, polyhedral movement and ascension power, relatively high efficiency in order to use frictional power and reducing repair and pause time are the advantages of this design. Also, observing the inner side of the pipe on the monitor, leads to reducing images. Moreover, its investigation by the introduced toolbox, causes more effective observation, more quickly diagnosis and analysis.