Inspection Robots in Oil and Gas Industry: a Review of Current Solutions and Future Trends

Yu, Leijian; Yang, Erfu; Ren, Peng; Luo, Cai; Dobie, Gordon; Gu, Dongbing; Yan, Xiu-Tian

doi:10.23919/iconac.2019.8895089

Cited by 48 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 29 publications

(40 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In [ 13 ], the authors introduced several types of inspection robots that are used for pipe inspections, such as long-distance inspection for sewer pipes. Apart from these robotics solutions, robot aided inspection methods play a vital role in urban infrastructure inspection and maintenance [ 14 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Raptor: A Design of a Drain Inspection Robot

Muthugala

Palanisamy

Samarakoon

et al. 2021

Sensors

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Frequent inspections are essential for drains to maintain proper function to ensure public health and safety. Robots have been developed to aid the drain inspection process. However, existing robots designed for drain inspection require improvements in their design and autonomy. This paper proposes a novel design of a drain inspection robot named Raptor. The robot has been designed with a manually reconfigurable wheel axle mechanism, which allows the change of ground clearance height. Design aspects of the robot, such as mechanical design, control architecture and autonomy functions, are comprehensively described in the paper, and insights are included. Maintaining the robot’s position in the middle of a drain when moving along the drain is essential for the inspection process. Thus, a fuzzy logic controller has been introduced to the robot to cater to this demand. Experiments have been conducted by deploying a prototype of the design to drain environments considering a set of diverse test scenarios. Experiment results show that the proposed controller effectively maintains the robot in the middle of a drain while moving along the drain. Therefore, the proposed robot design and the controller would be helpful in improving the productivity of robot-aided inspection of drains.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Raptor: A Design of a Drain Inspection Robot

Muthugala

Palanisamy

Samarakoon

et al. 2021

Sensors

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Based on this pioneering work, many further develop ments were carried out, focusing on different industrial applications: part feeding [15][16][17] transportation and assembly [18][19][20], as well as large-space manufacturing [21][22][23]. In re cent years, inspection robots have become more present in different domains, such as the oil and gas industry [24,25], the power industry [26,27], and civil infrastructure [28] Therefore, the idea to utilize an AIMM for inspection tasks is obvious. In contrast to recen developments in the area of inspection robots, our approach focuses on the motion plan ning addressing the surface orthogonal sensor alignment and the special requirements o a shared human-robot workspace in an industrial context.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Based on this pioneering work, many further developments were carried out, focusing on different industrial applications: part feeding [15][16][17], transportation and assembly [18][19][20], as well as large-space manufacturing [21][22][23]. In recent years, inspection robots have become more present in different domains, such as the oil and gas industry [24,25], the power industry [26,27], and civil infrastructure [28]. Therefore, the idea to utilize an AIMM for inspection tasks is obvious.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Robot-Assisted Large-Scale Inspection of Wind Turbine Blades in Manufacturing Using an Autonomous Mobile Manipulator

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Wind energy represents the dominant share of renewable energies. The rotor blades of a wind turbine are typically made from composite material, which withstands high forces during rotation. The huge dimensions of the rotor blades complicate the inspection processes in manufacturing. The automation of inspection processes has a great potential to increase the overall productivity and to create a consistent reliable database for each individual rotor blade. The focus of this paper is set on the process of rotor blade inspection automation by utilizing an autonomous mobile manipulator. The main innovations include a novel path planning strategy for zone-based navigation, which enables an intuitive right-hand or left-hand driving behavior in a shared human–robot workspace. In addition, we introduce a new method for surface orthogonal motion planning in connection with large-scale structures. An overall execution strategy controls the navigation and manipulation processes of the long-running inspection task. The implemented concepts are evaluated in simulation and applied in a real-use case including the tip of a rotor blade form.

show abstract

“…In the open ocean, UUVs are used widely for the inspection and maintenance of subsea assets, surveys, oceanography, and military purposes [2][3][4][5]. They are also now being extensively used for civil and onshore inspections, such as nuclear storage facilities [6], ship hull inspections [7], the inspection of flooded sewers and mines [8], and liquid storage tank inspections [9,10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Localisation of Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) in Complex and Confined Environments: A Review

Watson

Duecker

Groves

2020

Sensors

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The inspection of aquatic environments is a challenging activity, which is made more difficult if the environment is complex or confined, such as those that are found in nuclear storage facilities and accident sites, marinas and boatyards, liquid storage tanks, or flooded tunnels and sewers. Human inspections of these environments are often dangerous or infeasible, so remote inspection using unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) is used. Due to access restrictions and environmental limitations, such as low illumination levels, turbidity, and a lack of salient features, traditional localisation systems that have been developed for use in large bodies of water cannot be used. This means that UUV capabilities are severely restricted to manually controlled low-quality visual inspections, generating non-geospatially located data. The localisation of UUVs in these environments would enable the autonomous behaviour and the development of accurate maps. This article presents a review of the state-of-the-art in localisation technologies for these environments and identifies areas of future research to overcome the challenges posed.

show abstract

Inspection Robots in Oil and Gas Industry: a Review of Current Solutions and Future Trends

Cited by 48 publications

References 29 publications

Raptor: A Design of a Drain Inspection Robot

Raptor: A Design of a Drain Inspection Robot

A Robot-Assisted Large-Scale Inspection of Wind Turbine Blades in Manufacturing Using an Autonomous Mobile Manipulator

Localisation of Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) in Complex and Confined Environments: A Review

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About