Study of Locomotion Control Characteristics for Six Wheels Driven In-Pipe Robot

An articulated multi-unit in-pipe wireless robot inspection system was developed for inspecting the inner surface of pipelines using MFL (magnetic flux leakage), which consists of six modules, moves in a pipe 195 mm in diameter, and can be controlled by commands from an intelligent control center through a CAN bus. The proposed robot has six wheeled driving arms fixed circumferentially 60deg apart on the robot body frame, and driving wheels, which can stretch against the pipe wall, are mounted directly on the ends of driving arms and can be driven by a single DC servo motor, respectively, to form the six active wheel driven mode. Due to the power consumption of the robot and the capacity of batteries which contradicts the creation of great traction forces with low power consumption, we have developed a new type of compact robot control mode, namely, main-subordinate control mode. The locomotion control characteristics were tested in the laboratory, and the results proved that the modular structures of the robot driving arms and its multi-motor main-subordinate control mode have advantages of great traction force and low power consumption