A Proposal for a Multi-Drive Heterogeneous Modular Pipe-Inspection Micro-Robot

This paper presents the architecture used to develop a micro-robot for narrow pipes inspection. Both the electromechanical design and the control scheme will be described. In pipe environments it is very useful to have a method to retrieve information of the state of the inside part of the pipes in order to detect damages, breaks and holes. Due to the different types of pipes that exists, a modular approach with different types of modules has been chosen in order to be able to adapt to the shape of the pipe and to chose the most appropriate gait. The micro-robot has been designed for narrow pipes, a field in which there are not many prototypes. The robot incorporates a camera module for visual inspection and several drive modules for locomotion and turn (helicoidal, inchworm, two degrees of freedom rotation). The control scheme is based on semi-distributed behavior control and is also described. A simulation environment is also presented for prototypes testing.