Experimental verification of analytical torques enabling a screw drive in-pipe robot to pass through bent pipes

Kakogawa, Atsushi; Ma, Shugen

doi:10.1109/robio.2011.6181541

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…With the recent demand for miniaturization and simplification, many studies have focused on helical-type in-pipe robots, which can be used in the petroleum, chemistry, and nuclear fields [19]- [21]. First, a helical-type robot has a simple structure with only one driving motor, and thus, it is easy to miniaturize.…”

Section: Basic Design Conceptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variable Pitch Helical Drive in-Pipe Robot

Ren

Liu²,

Chen

et al. 2016

International Journal of Robotics and Automation

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Pipelines are extensively used to transport water, oil, and gas for daily human activities and industrial production. An in-pipe robot is necessary to prevent fluid leakage accident by regularly detecting the quality status of a pipeline. Given the complex paths and shapes of pipes, an in-pipe robot cannot easily pass through curved pipes. In this study, a novel variable pitch helical drive in-pipe robot is introduced. The variable pitch adjusting mechanism makes switching the robot between three motion patterns (normal, variable speed, and turning) easy. The proposed robot can pass through curved pipes actively by controlling the helical angle of each driving wheel separately. The space spiral kinematic trajectories of the passive typical and the active novel helical in-pipe robots are compared. A prototype is developed to verify the validity of the proposed structure and function.

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Section: Basic Design Conceptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variable Pitch Helical Drive in-Pipe Robot

Ren

Liu²,

Chen

et al. 2016

International Journal of Robotics and Automation

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“…12 They further reported a method to calculate the optimal spring stiffness of the tilted driving wheels so that the robot could provide enough torque to turn around a bend. 13,14 Apart from being used for in-pipe traction, helical drives are also used as modular units to build more complicated snake-like robot that can move in open fields mimicking a snake's motion. 15 All previous reports on helical drive in-pipe robots have similar design as shown in Figs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A simple and novel helical drive in-pipe robot

2014

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SUMMARYPipeline grids of various size and material are pervasive in today's modern society. The frequent inspection and maintenance of such pipeline grids have presented a tremendous challenge. It is advocated that only advanced robot design embedded with intelligent electronics and control algorithms could perform the job. Given the ever increasing demands for intelligent in-pipe robots, various in-pipe drive mechanisms have been reported. One of the simplest is helical wheel drives that have only one degree of freedom. All previously reported in-pipe helical drives are based on independent passive wheels that are tilted an angle. One of the major problems of current helical wheel drives is their unstable traction force. In this paper, instead of allowing the wheels to rotate independently, they are synchronized by adding a timing belt. This small change will result in significant improvement which will be highlighted in this paper. In the proposed driving method, tracking force is analyzed together with a comprehensive set of traction force measurement experiments. Both analysis and experiments have shown that the proposed mechanism has great potential for in-pipe robot drive design.

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“…11 More analysis about the characteristics of the helical drive design was provided by Kakogawa and Ma. 13,14 Helical drives can not only be used as stand-alone drives for in-pipe robots, but also used as a modular drive for more advanced robots such as a snake-like robot. 15 In this paper, helical drives are used for the development of an inchworm in-pipe robot.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimized inchworm motion planning for a novel in-pipe robot

Liu

Chen

Ren

et al. 2013

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C:

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Modern society is fueled by very comprehensive grids of gas and liquid supply pipelines. The frequent inspection and maintenance of such pipeline grids is not a trivial task. It has been demonstrated that such task is best performed by using in-pipe robots. In this paper, a novel inchworm robot design and its optimized motion planning are presented. The proposed design uses a helical drive for both gripping and locomotion of the robot. The extension and retraction between inchworm segments are facilitated by conic springs as they can store strain energy. The proposed inchworm robot can also be made very compact without sacrificing stroke length as conic springs can be easily designed with telescopic feature. To generate inchworm motion, a sinusoidal velocity pattern is planned for each segment. The frequency of the velocity pattern is optimized using a genetic algorithm (GA). The optimization result from the GA method has been validated using a traditional gradient based method.

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Experimental verification of analytical torques enabling a screw drive in-pipe robot to pass through bent pipes

Cited by 7 publications

References 11 publications

Variable Pitch Helical Drive in-Pipe Robot

Variable Pitch Helical Drive in-Pipe Robot

A simple and novel helical drive in-pipe robot

Optimized inchworm motion planning for a novel in-pipe robot

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