The MagneBike inspection robot is a climbing robot equipped with magnetic wheels. The robot is designed to drive on 3D complexly shaped pipe structures, therefore it is necessary to provide 3D visualization tools for the user who remotely controls the robot out of sight. The localization system is required to provide a 3D map of the unknown environment and the 3D location of the robot in the en...

Recently many plants' pipes and drains became old and many robots to inspect these pipes were developed in the past. Wired robots were put to practical use, but they had a heavy power supply and a signal wire. Therefore, new inspection robots using wireless radio communication system are considered useful for long complex pipes and long distance pipes including straight, vertical and bend line....

A mobile robot deployed for remote inspection, surveying or rescue missions can fail due to various possibilities and can be hardware or software related. These failure scenarios necessitate manual recovery (self-rescue) of the robot from the environment. It would bring unforeseen challenges to recover the mobile robot if the environment where it was deployed had hazardous or harmful conditions...

Nishi [1-3], Backes [4] have built large wall-climbing robots with suction cups. However, designing a micro-robot that can climb walls, walk on ceilings, crawl through pipes and traverse on floors is a challenging task. Autonomous micro-robot system has wide applications include remotely monitoring hazardous environments, reconnaissance, defects inspection, and fire fighting. The restrictions s...

Purpose – Aims to report on the various types of tele-operated mobile service robots for remote inspection and maintenance, especially in the field of nuclear industry. Design/methodology/approach – Describes nuclear electric robot operator (NERO), Sizewell A duct inspection equipment (SADIE), Robug-IIs (all legbased) and Roboslave (wheel-based). Findings – That these robots can handle a signif...

In the past 20 years, numerous in-pipe inspection robots (IPIRs) have been designed and utilized. According to the propulsion mechanism amount, these in-pipe inspection robots (IPIRs) can be summarized into two categories, i.e. single locomotion system and multiple locomotion system. This paper presents the classic structure features and characters of the two categories of IPIRs, and furthermor...

In the routine inspection of industrial or other areas , teams of robots with various sensors could operate together to great eeect, but require reliable, accurate and exible localisation capabilities to be able to move around safely. We demonstrate accurate localisation for an inspection team consisting of a robot with stereo active vision and its companion with an active lighting system, and ...

Visual inspection and nondestructive evaluation (NDE) of natural gas distribution mains is an important future maintenance cost-planning step for the nation’s gas utilities. These data need to be gathered at an affordable cost with the fewest excavations and maximum linear feet inspected for each deployment, with minimal to no disruption in service. Current methods (sniffing, direct assessment)...

Electrical companies routinely inspect their overhead lines by helicopter. Current detailed aerial inspection approach uses trained inspectors who fly aboard helicopters to inspect the lines with binoculars and cameras, while recording the data in a logbook. The procedure is performed while the helicopter hovers over and around power lines and structures, creating an element of danger for the p...

Image-based effector servoing is a process of perception-action cycles for handling a robot effector under continual visual feedback. This paper applies visual servoing mechanisms not only for handling objects, but also for camera calibration and object inspection. A 6-DOFmanipulator and a stereo camera head are mounted on separate platforms and are steered independently. In a first phase (cali...