Design and Analysis of an Enhanced In-Pipe Inspection Robot for Complex Structure

This paper presents a novel wheeled wall-pressing in-pipe inspection robot that consists of a central body (cylinder frame), a driving system, and a wall-pressing mechanism. The locomotion system of the robot consists of only a single worm gear and a single DC motor. The proposed robot can move freely in horizontal, vertical pipelines and bends using a simple passive-based wall-pressing mechanism to adapt to the complexity of pipelines with various diameters between 170 mm and 270 mm. SolidWorks software package 2024 is utilized to design, model, and assemble the virtual prototype of the proposed robot. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is conducted on the designed parts to investigate if they can withstand the stress acting on them while passing through a complex pipeline network. The motion study is conducted to verify the performance of the proposed robot traveling in complex structures. The performed analysis shows that the proposed robot has good performance in various pipeline sections.