Introduction:
The pipes in plants, including power and chemical plants, require steady maintenance, as the corrosion and abrasion by the fluid within the pipe and from the external environment occur. However, as the process to inspect the pipe is not automated, manual inspection is a very time-consuming job. In buildings, cables and pipes have to be inspected periodically to prevent or to detect damages. Therefore, in order to reduce the inspection time and cost, we nowadays use pipe climbing robot for pipe inspection. The pipe crawling robots have web cameras mounted on them which captures the images inside the pipes and sends it to the control room. Thus any faults inside the pipe can be detected easily without manually inspecting the whole pipelines. This can save time and cost spend on inspection purpose in industries. Working: The locomotion of the robot inside the pipe is solely depending on the 6 motors mounted on wooden pieces. By powering all the motors in forward direction we can make the robot move forward, and by powering in the reverse direction we can make the robot move backwards inside the pipe. To move the robots slowly inside the pipe we should decrease the voltage of the batter used. To move the robot at maximum speed we have to power the motors with the maximum rated voltage of the motors. By rotating the handle through many rotations we can change the outer diameter of the robot. If the handle is rotated in clockwise direction by holding the frame of the robot firmly, we can decrease the diameter of the robot. Anticlockwise rotation results in the increase of the diameter of the robot. Features:
Members: Project Guide: Dr. N Ramachandran, Professor, NIT Calicut Project members: Ajith A M Project duration: Jan-April 2014 |