Motion Planning and Simulation of Multifunctional Over-the-tube Pipe Climbing Robot

Abstract

Due to the complexity of the current industrial pipeline layout, in order to improve the efficiency of pipeline inspection and maintenance, a multi-functional obstacle-surmounting pipe-crawling robot was designed to address the issues of varying pipe diameters and positions. The movement pattern of the crawling robot was studied, the variation of the clamping force of the clamping mechanism during the climbing process was analyzed, and the mapping relationship between various parameters was obtained as the basis for later kinematic simulation. The design of inverted V, positive V and other drive combinations and the planning of multi-functional obstacle-surmounting actions were conducted to verify the rationality of the structural design and the stability of the motion process of the multi-functional obstacle-surmounting pipe-crawling robot. Results showed that the multi-functional obstaclesurmounting pipe-crawling robot can achieve the expected crawling speed of 0.3m/s when moving on a horizontal pipeline, and the motion process is stable. When moving on a vertical pipeline, from the speed and displacement curve of the robot on the x, y, and z axes, it can be seen that the speed and displacement of the pipe-crawling robot are steadily increasing without any left or right swing, indicating that the clamping mechanism works well and the structural design is reasonable.