Research on a Tri-axial Differential-Drive In-Pipe Robot

Pipelines for oil, gas and fluid transportation require a robot to have an excellent mobility and adaptability to various pipelines with elbows. In this paper, a novel differential drive in-pipe robot called tri-axial differential drive in-pipe robot, which is composed of a tri-axial differential mechanism and a pipeline adaptation mechanism, is presented and developed for the inspection of pipelines with inner diameter from 275 to 300 mm. The tri-axial differential mechanism with 3-DOF for steering allows the robot easily adapt to the existing configuration of pipelines by providing outstanding mobility during navigation. Then differential and mechanics property of the robot in straight pipeline and elbow are analyzed based on established mathematical model, and multi-body simulation on the robot is conducted to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed model.

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