Design and Analysis of Independently Adjustable Large In-Pipe Robot for Long-Distance Pipeline

Large oil and gas pipelines are prone to corrosion and leakage, so in-pipe inspection is necessary. In this article, we show a novel robot mechanism for long-distance pipeline inspection. The robot consists of three crawlers and electric putters, which can adjust their speed and radius independently. Independent adjustment and system self-checking of the robot are achieved through multiple sensors. To make the robot operate efficiently, we studied the influence of size parameters on the forces between the central body and crawler. Moreover, we investigated how to adjust the attitude of the robot through the differential speed of the three crawlers. Static and dynamic simulations of internal forces are presented. The primary experiments indicate that our robot can operate stably in a large steel pipe.