Development of an autonomous in‐pipe robot for offshore pipeline maintenance

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop a novel autonomous in‐pipe robot to perform the preventive point reparation for long‐distance offshore oil pipelines.Design/methodology/approachThe autonomous in‐pipe robot performs online ultrasonic inspection for pipe wall thickness, and the original inspection data are stored in large capacity hard disk. Through the offline data analysis by the data analysts and the software tool, the pipeline health status is known. If server defects lie there, the in‐pipe robot is introduced into the pipeline once more to indicate the defect's location to the maintenance ship.FindingsThe laboratory tests and the field tests prove the feasibility and validity of the developed autonomous in‐pipe robot. Furthermore, the application of intelligent control techniques ensures the mission completion by the autonomous in‐pipe robot, which worked in the awful pipeline environment.Practical implicationsThe developed autonomous in‐pipe robot helps eliminate lost production costs and pipeline downtime caused by leakages and guarantees the safe run of offshore oil pipelines.Originality/valueFor the application of the autonomous in‐pipe robot, there are no special requirements for maintained pipelines themselves, so it is applicable to the point reparation for most long‐distance welded offshore pipelines.

Preventive maintenance policy of single‐unit systems based on shot‐noise process

“…These environmental stresses will significantly accelerate the corrosion speed. To reduce system hazard rate, preventive maintenance actions are generally conducted by inline devices such as intelligent pigs and magnetic flux tools …”

“…To reduce system hazard rate, preventive maintenance actions are generally conducted by inline devices such as intelligent pigs and magnetic flux tools. 28 A possible sample path of λ(t) is shown in Figure 1. In this figure, the baseline hazard rate is λ h (t) = 0.1t 2 , and the repair interval is T = 5.…”

Pipe Network Locomotion with a Snake Robot

“…To navigate pipe networks, specialized wheeled and tracked robots have been designed for specific classes of pipe (e.g., freshwater, sewer, gas) and narrow ranges of pipe diameters (Jung et al, 2000;Wang, Cao, Luan, & Zhang, 2010). Wakimoto (Wakimoto, Nakajima, Takata, Kanda, & Suzumori, 2003) and Kuwada (Kuwada, Wakimoto, Suzumori, & Adomi, 2008) developed snake robots and an assortment of controllers that use a planar sine-wave gait to push against pipes and negotiate bends in a lab environment.…”

Design of in-pipe 3SPR/3RPS parallel manipulator and its kinestatics analysis

“…Zhang et al studied the autonomous in-pipe robot performs online ultrasonic inspection for pipe wall thickness [5]. Wang et al [6] develop an autonomous in-pipe robot to perform the preventive point reparation for long-distance offshore oil pipelines. Roh et al [7,8] presented a comprehensive work for moving inside underground urban gas pipelines with a miniature differentialdrive in-pipe robot for steering with differential-drive wheels.…”