Abstract
Nowadays, pipes buried under a road supply houses with water and town gas. Pipes must be periodically inspected in order to prevent the accident caused by leakage of fluid in pipes. We have proposed inspecting pipes using by green caterpillar type in-pipe mobile robot. The robot is structured by three somites and four suction brakes. The somites imitates the waving motion, and the suction brake imitates the proleg of the green caterpillar. The somites movement and the act of clinging to pipe all using by suction brakes uses pneumatic pressure. The pneumatic pressure is feeded to the robot from air comprresor and vacuum pomps through air feeding tubes. Now, we derive equilibrium of forces using by dynamics models of moving robot. As a result, we can predict traction force of the robot.
