Chapter 3.4: Wall Climbing Crawlers for Nondestructive Testing

Abstract

There is a strong international trend that uses robots as a strategic technology for automated inspection and maintenance work in hazardous environments such as in chemical plants and the nuclear power industry [Fukuda, 1990, Roman, 1993, Takehara, 1989]. The main plant components that benefit from automated inspection are long pipelines and the walls of storage or buffer tanks that are inspected either from the outside or the inside. Large benefits in performance and cost savings are possible. For example, an electric utility has reported a saving of five million dollars within eight years on two plants with a capital spend on robotic hardware\nof two million dollars [Proc. Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 1993].