Autonomous Pipe Inspection Robot

Abstract

A pipe inspection robot is a machine used to inspect, provide real time solutions to the pipes and cleaning of the pipes (scales or the deposits formed due to the fluid flow). There are already number of designs available for the pipe inspection robot. This paper proposes a new pipeline inspection robot with parallelogram linkage mechanism which is designed for inspection of pipes ranging from 100 mm (internal diameter) to 250 mm (internal diameter). The robot is driven by three chained wheel mechanisms each of them separated by 120 degrees. The mechanism allows the autonomous movement of the robot and hence saves time. It has night vision camera enabled mode for image processing to study the corrosion rate of the pipe surface as well as the condition of the pipe inner surface. The kinematic model of the bot is modeled in SolidWorks and the prototype is developed. The performance of the robot is verified both by stimulation and experimentally.