Abstract
The pipes in plants, including power and chemical plants, require steady maintenance, as the corrosion and abrasion by the fluid within the pipe and from the external environment occur. However, as the process to inspect the pipe is not automated, manual inspection is a very time-consuming job. Therefore, in order to reduce the inspection time and cost, we have proposed the pipe climbing robot for pipe inspection. The presented robot is applicable to plants in operation, because this robot is an out-pipe type, which allows it to move outside of the pipes. And the robot can cover straight as well as bended pipes in various diameters with independently controlled and length adjustable driving wheels. The designs of the mechanism as well as the control system for this robot have been presented and the feasibility of the proposed robot has been demonstrated by the climbing experiments.
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Lee, S.H. Design of the out-pipe type pipe climbing robot. Int. J. Precis. Eng. Manuf. 14, 1559–1563 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12541-013-0210-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12541-013-0210-z