Design and Development of an External Modular Pi-XTS Robot for Detecting Presence of Defects in Pipelines

Abstract

This paper presents an external semi-autonomous inspection robot capable of detecting surface cracks on steel pipelines. External inspection of pipeline in unstructured environment remains a challenge. A novel modular design of the robot is proposed to enable easy handling and placement of the robot on the pipeline surface. However, in order to establish a modular design a scanning mechanism is developed for the inspection approach. Furthermore, power transfer between modules and thermal studies on the pipeline is also carried out. In this paper we investigate the possibility of high manoeuvrability of modular robot in both horizontal and inclined pipelines. An ultrasonic inspection method is adopted and integrated to the scanner module for inspection of cracks on a 60mm diameter pipeline. We further validate its effectiveness by experimental verification and represented its accuracy, inspection duration on comparison with theoretical formulation.