Mechanisms of Autonomous Pipe-Surface Inspection Robot with Magnetic Elements

Suzuki, Masayuki; Yukawa, Toshihiro; Satoh, Yuichi; Okano, Hideharu

doi:10.1109/icsmc.2006.384625

Cited by 28 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…A classic combination for robot climbing tasks is the magnetic adhesion and wheel locomotion, e.g., in [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]. The inherent characteristic of the magnetic components, typically permanent magnets, guarantee full time adherence without a power source or other auxiliary device, which is very convenient since the CR's weight is a crucial point in the project.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adhesion Force Control and Active Gravitational Compensation for Autonomous Inspection in LPG Storage Spheres

Oliveira

Arruda

Neves

et al. 2012

2012 Brazilian Robotics Symposium and Latin American Robotics Symposium

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This paper presents a climbing robot based in wheel locomotion and magnetic adherence, a common mechanical topology applicable to a wide range of industrial tasks. The robot is applied to perform internal/external inspection in liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) storage spheres, hence, some severe operation features like adherence and force balance impose necessary conditions to the robot. In order to satisfy these conditions, a dynamic control system is developed in two steps; active gravitational compensation and adhesion force control.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adhesion Force Control and Active Gravitational Compensation for Autonomous Inspection in LPG Storage Spheres

Oliveira

Arruda

Neves

et al. 2012

2012 Brazilian Robotics Symposium and Latin American Robotics Symposium

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“…In the recent years, various kinds of appropriative pipeline robots [4][5][6] working inside or outside pipes are developed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Boiler maintenance robot with multi-operational schema

Gao

Jiang

Gao

et al. 2008

2008 IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation

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A boiler maintenance robot which is equipped many kinds of operation devices is proposed. This robot has compact size and can be used to do works of ash cleaning, slag purging, thickness measurement and symbol marking for boiler water-cooling tubes maintenance in one work cycle. The robot can move smoothly on the tube-wall using double magnetic tracked mechanism which is designed specially. In this paper, the structure of the robot, method of the operation and devices, self-protection mechanisms and control system are described in detail and the idea of the design is given. Furthermore, through experiments in laboratory and thermal power station, it is proved that this robot has strong adhering ability to the tube-wall and practical operation ability.

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“…After a few cm, this robot already failed, as the ferromagnetic rust was sticking to all parts of the magnetic wheelnot only destroying the rubber but also penetrating into the gears. For this reason, the idea to use magnetic wheeled robots with additional mechanisms for passing specific obstacles [1][2][3][4] had to be rejected very soon. The alternative of using magnets in the structure instead of magnetic wheels [5], which is slightly more dirt-resistant than magnetic wheels, had to be rejected as well, as these robots usually do not achieve the required mobility for the difficult topology that is formed by the uneven surface of several tubes and the specific geometry of the coal nozzles.…”

Section: Drawbacks Of Using Classical Climbing Robotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In order to find the most appropriate principle for the magnetic foot, the mechanisms used in classical climbing robots with magnetic adhesion and in manipulators for industrial robots were analyzed and compared against each other. Basically, three groups can be distinguished -electromagnets [6,7], assemblies with moving magnets [12,13] and lift mechanisms [1][2][3][4]14]. The lift mechanisms can be further divided according to the way of motion (either rotary [1], linear with spindles [2,3,14], linear with pulley/wire-transmissions [4] or linear with pneumatics/hydraulics).…”

Section: Magnetic Feet With Variable Forcementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The current access method consists of placing scaffolds in the entire space (see Fig. 1-b) -an operation which normally takes more than one week and thus causes significant financial losses for the power 2 plant operator (each day of outage costs up to 1mio €). In order to decrease the total inspection time, it was proposed to access all areas with compact mobile robots instead of human workers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Lightweight Magnetic Foot With Variable Force, for Docking/Landing With Micro-Helicopters on Rust-Covered Walls in Boiler Furnaces

Fischer

Hürzeler

Siegwart

2010

Emerging Trends in Mobile Robotics

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This paper describes the design, implementation and application of a lightweight magnetic foot with variable force, which was developed for docking/landing on vertical walls with a micro-helicopter in order to perform inspection tasks there; and afterwards undock to fly away without problems. Even if not being a complete climbing robot, the magnetic foot on the helicopter uses technologies which were originally developed for climbing robots, operates in an environment which is difficult to access (furnaces in coalfired boilers) and could be useful for future climbing robots with inchworm-locomotion. By using a lightweight actuation concept based on miniature pulley-wire-transmissions, a simple and robust control strategy and a mechanical design that is well shielded against ferromagnetic dust or other types of aggressive dirt; the here presented magnetic foot with variable adhesion force achieves several advantages over previous designs -such as an excellent compromise concerning lightweight design at strong adhesion force (Fadh,max/(m*g)>100), robustness against most environmental hazards, low residual force (Fadh,max/Fred<30) and low manufacturing cost. After explaining the environment constraints, the basic concept of docking with an unmanned micro-helicopter and the requirements for the magnetic foot; a brief overview on most principles for force variation in magnetic feet is provided. This comparison is followed by the presentation of the basic design concept and its implementation in a prototype. The paper concludes with the measured values of this prototype and provides an outlook on future work and how this technology can be used in other applications.

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Mechanisms of Autonomous Pipe-Surface Inspection Robot with Magnetic Elements

Cited by 28 publications

References 4 publications

Adhesion Force Control and Active Gravitational Compensation for Autonomous Inspection in LPG Storage Spheres

Adhesion Force Control and Active Gravitational Compensation for Autonomous Inspection in LPG Storage Spheres

Boiler maintenance robot with multi-operational schema

Lightweight Magnetic Foot With Variable Force, for Docking/Landing With Micro-Helicopters on Rust-Covered Walls in Boiler Furnaces

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